Conference USA will add Missouri State as a full conference member on July 1, 2025, the conference announced Friday.

The move will grow CUSA to 12 members in 2025, including the additions of Kennesaw State this summer and Delaware next year. It will also grow the Football Bowl Subdivision to 136 members.

“The institution boasts a great tradition in athletics and academics that will strengthen and further position our membership for long term success in the national landscape,” commissioner Judy MacLeod said in a statement. “We look forward to our partnership with President Clif Smart, incoming President Dr. Biff Williams, Director of Athletics Kyle Moats, and their entire leadership team.”

Missouri State has finished second in the Missouri Valley Conference All-Sports Trophy for three consecutive years. The football program is coming off a 4-7 season under first-year coach Ryan Beard, but the Bears reached the FCS playoffs with consecutive top-15 finishes under Bobby Petrino in 2020 and 2021. The men’s basketball team last reached the NCAA Tournament in 1999. The women’s basketball team reached two Final Fours in 1992 and 2001.

CUSA has been in expansion mode since late 2021, when the trickle-down effect of Texas and Oklahoma’s announced move to the SEC saw CUSA…

Tennessee is hiring Kim Caldwell as its next women’s basketball coach, the school announced Sunday.

Caldwell spent the last year as the head coach at Marshall. The Thundering Herd went 17-1 in conference and 26-7 overall in Caldwell’s first year, a vast improvement from the team’s 9-9 conference and 17-14 overall record in 2022-23. Caldwell’s early success earned her the 2024 Spalding Maggie Dixon NCAA Division I Rookie Coach of the Year honor.

She also was named the Sun Belt Conference Coach of the Year after capturing the conference title in a 95-92 overtime win over James Madison and leading the Thundering Herd to the school’s second-ever NCAA Tournament berth and first since 1997.

“From the beginning, our goal has been to find a dynamic head coach who can restore our women’s basketball program to national prominence. Kim Caldwell is the ideal person to lead us,” athletic director Danny White said in a statement. “Kim has a winning formula that she has successfully implemented everywhere she has coached, with a fast-paced, high-octane offense and pressure defense that has led to remarkable results.”

Caldwell replaces Kellie Harper, who was fired this offseason, as women’s basketball’s winningest program looks to return to the top of the sport. In…