Head Coach Kim Caldwell said Hollingshead left her surprise after initial evaluations
Knoxville, Tenn. – Shortly after being named the Lady Vols Head Basketball Coach, Kim Caldwell set up workouts and evaluations.
Who would make the cut? Would she learn something new about the current players?
She’d learn something new about senior Jillian Hollingshead.
The forward came to Tennessee in her sophomore season. She had plenty of hype coming out of high school.
Hollingshead was the No. 16 overall player, four-star rating by ProspectsNation.com.
The No. 37 overall player, No. 5 forward, four-star rating in the espnW 100, and a
McDonald’s All-American (2021).
One of her best collegiate games came during the SEC Quarterfinals against Kentucky in the 2023-24 season.
She blocked a career-best four shots and added seven points, two rebounds and two assists in 21 minutes.
Fast forward to the spring and she showed Kim Caldwell something she hadn’t really seen on film.
“I was like, ‘Holy Smokes!’ she is great, she is built for this system. She really is.”
Somewhere in the evaluations of full court ball handling with cones, shooting threes, one-on-one from the three-point line, she left Caldwell surprised.
That was the easy part.
Then came summer workouts and conditioning. An aspect of Caldwell implementing her system that had the team near exhaustion.
“In the summer we did a lot of conditioning, and weights and we’re like, “Oh my gosh!” And since we’ve started our practices and stuff we’re just going! So I feel like that was a turning point,” said Hollingshead.
As the months past attention and training turned towards learning what Caldwell describes as “positionless basketball.”
Jill: “When she first said that I was like, “What do you mean? How are we going have a point guard, a big, how are we going to have a shooting guard?!” But then I realized everybody does everything,” said Hollingshead. “It definitely makes sense to me now. I mean she has a good track record anyways so I trusted her. but I was like how are we going to do this? But now I kind of see it and we’re all on board.”
As the Lady Vols inch closer to Sunday’s closed scrimmage and next week’s exhibition against Carson Newman, Caldwell said Hollingshead just needs to get a little more comfortable.
“She just needs to be a little bit more comfortable pushing through being faster, other than that she has the skill set 100% to play outside,” said Caldwell.
A part of this new era of Lady Vols basketball has been the meshing of new teammates, coaching staff, and scout team.
Despite the numerous new faces, you wouldn’t know it by how connected the team is.
“Everything is like, super positive. It just helps you bring out more in yourself and helps you bring out stuff in your teammates as well,” said Hollingshead.
That environment has also encouraged Hollingshead to become more vocal on and off the court.
“Just talking on the court, talking outside the court, just the chemistry we have off the court and on the court, with the coaches, the players, even down to the support staff,” said Hollingshead. “We are just such a close group already. This is the closest we’ve been as a team in like forever. We just mesh so well together and we just started together. It was shocking to me, but I’m glad. It was a good shock.”