Before Bill Ferrara ever coached at Tennessee, Pat Summitt showed him what Lady Vol basketball was supposed to look like.
Ferrara was a young graduate assistant at Florida in 2006 when he was given the opportunity to prepare his first scouting report.
The team he was prepping for, Tennessee. A Lady Vol team led by redshirt freshman Candace Parker.
Florida went on to upset the Lady Vols 95-93 in overtime in Knoxville on Feb. 26, 2006, but Ferrara said the week leading into that game shaped his understanding of basketball forever.
“I learned more about the game of basketball in that week preparing for Tennessee and preparing for one of Pat’s teams than I ever did in all those years leading up to that,” Ferrara said Tuesday.
Now, nearly two decades later, Ferrara is back in Knoxville as one of Kim Caldwell’s top assistants. He said reconnecting Tennessee women’s basketball with the standard Summitt built is a major focus for the program moving forward.
“The tradition of Tennessee and what Pat did for this place, this city even, and this university, that’s super attractive,” Ferrara said. “We’re trying to get back to that tradition and be an addition to that tradition. We have to know where we came from.”
Ferrara, hired this offseason after helping Florida State become one of the nation’s top offensive teams, said Caldwell has already begun emphasizing Tennessee’s history to players and staff.
Caldwell recently distributed Sum It Up , a book on Summitt, to the Lady Vols players and coaches. She also personally reached out to former players, coaches, and alumni in an effort to reconnect generations of Lady Vol basketball.
“One of the first things that Kim said to me when I first got here was, ‘One of my blind spots here has been not educating our players on truly the tradition of the program and just assuming they knew,’” Ferrara said. “Now that’s a huge part of it.”
Ferrara said former players and coaches will become more involved with the program throughout the season.
“The book itself, that’s just a start,” Ferrara said. “I think it’s going to be a fun bridge from the new-age Lady Vols to the historic Pat Summitt-age Lady Vols.”
For Ferrara, Summitt’s teams represented toughness, effort, and relentless competitiveness.
“Pat’s teams played so hard,” Ferrara said. “They played with passion. They made you earn every single basket. They made you box out every single time, otherwise they were getting an offensive rebound.”
That mentality mirrors the culture Tennessee hopes to restore.
“You want hard-working kids with a chip on their shoulder,” Ferrara said. “You have to tell them what it’s going to be like.”
For Ferrara, the opportunity to help return Tennessee to national prominence made the decision to come to Knoxville an easy one.
“At this stage of my career, I want to be somewhere where I can have a chance of going to a Final Four,” Ferrara said. “Tennessee hasn’t been to a Final Four in quite some time. I think that’s a pretty cool thing to chase.”
