Tennessee’s women’s basketball roster has been stripped to one player for next season after guard Jaida Civil announced Monday that she is entering the transfer portal and Oliviyah Edwards requested a release from her national letter of intent.
The departures leave the Lady Vols with Gabby Minus as the only player set to arrive for next season, a stunning turn for a program that had the nation’s No. 10 recruiting class before Edwards changed course. Tennessee went 16-14 this season under second-year coach Kim Caldwell and lost to NC State 76-61 in the first round of the NCAA tournament on March 20.
Civil played seven minutes in that loss and finished the season averaging 6.4 points and 4.0 rebounds. Edwards, a 6-foot-3 forward from Washington, originally signed with Caldwell’s program in November after choosing Tennessee over offers from USC, South Carolina, LSU, Florida and Washington. She was named a McDonald’s All American this season.
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In a statement, Edwards’ mother, Jordan West, said the family was thankful to Tennessee for the time spent recruiting her daughter. West added that, with the changes around the women’s basketball team, she believed it was in Edwards’ best interest to part ways and reopen her recruitment.
The shake-up comes after a season in which every player with remaining eligibility entered the transfer portal, including all of the highly touted, second-ranked freshmen class. Seniors Janiah Barker and Zee Spearman will graduate, and with the portal departures and Edwards’ release, Tennessee’s recruiting class will fall out of the top 25.
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The collapse of the roster underscores how fast the season unraveled in Knoxville. Tennessee finished 16-14 after ending the year on an eight-game losing streak, its longest in the modern era, and it entered the year ranked in the preseason top 10 by the. The Lady Vols also suffered a 30-point loss to UConn in February, the largest margin in the series and the second-worst loss in program history, and dropped seven games by at least 15 points, the most in 40 years.
Edwards’ release adds another hit to a class that once looked like a foundation piece for Caldwell’s rebuild. Trinity Jones, the No. 11 recruit in the 2026 class, was released from her letter of intent with Clemson earlier in the week, another sign of how unstable the top of women’s recruiting has become.
For Tennessee, the next step is not a roster adjustment but a complete rebuild. With only Minus set to arrive and no returning player left in the program, Caldwell now faces a blank slate after a season that exposed just how quickly a promising class can disappear.
