Guru Commentary: Winds of Change As New Decade Looms With The Start Of 2019-20

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

On Wednesday afternoon last week two events occurred within a few hours of each other that as much as anything else signaled the 2019-20 season opening Tuesday that will carry women’s collegiate basketball into a new decade is a seminal mark on the sport’s history.

 The first was the release at noon of the new Associated Press women’s rankings, always a combination of philosophies, that featured both a new generation of teams and stars while also showing dips, some of them steep, suffered by what had been the traditional ruling order.

 The second event happened a few hours later out of Philadelphia’s Main Line, appropriately as the sun was setting, where Villanova’s long-running women’s coach, the affable Harry Perretta, announced his 42^nd season would be his last, in part due to health issues and in part because perhaps it’s time.

 In terms of the poll and ensuing next day’s release of the preseason All-America team, change was symbolized with the rise of Oregon to a first-ever No. 1 ranking and the absence of Tennessee, ending a 42-year appearance streak in the opening vote. 

 The Lady Vols’ only preseason omission had been the very first ranking, then Top 20 not Top 25, and voted by coaches not media members, which debuted in The Philadelphia Inquirer in November, 1976.

 Notre Dame, two seasons removed from winning its second NCAA title, off the graduation of five starters, plunged from the top spot a year ago to 16^th.

 Even the seemingly invincible Connecticut Huskies, holding 11 NCAA titles and until further notice a running Women’s Final Four appearance streak of 12, got nicked falling to fifth, the lowest position at the start since deep into the previous decade and only second lowest overall well beyond that except for another fifth place ranking near the end of last season.

 While holding the record for Top 5 and Top 10 appearances in a decade with 186 appearances, UConn needs to hang on for the next eight polls to conclude a perfect decade run in what obviously would be both categories since the first week of January in 2010.

Overall, this is the 769th women’s ranking.

 And as far as the all-Americans on the first team, it’s only the second time in a long while that the five has no representatives from UConn, Tennessee, or Notre Dame.

 Obviously at the collegiate level, graduation will impact rosters over a four-year period, though the traditional rulers have managed to restock most of the time.

 After last season, UConn sent two more stellar all-Americans in the first round of the draft to the WNBA in Napheesa Collier, who became rookie of the year, and three-point shooting ace Katie Lou Samuelson.

 Huskies Hall of Fame coach Geno Auriemma noted recently how there were always players in his program with identifiable roles to step up as replacements and while there’s still a motherlode of talent on the roster, how it will play out is still an unknown.

 Change in affiliation is also on the horizon for UConn, returning next summer to the not-quite-the-same Big East it left with the football members to a newly-sliced American Athletic Conference in 2013-14, where it has never lost to a league rival in six previous seasons and likely the one ahead.

 Though the recently released rankings count as Poll No. 1 of the next go-round in the Guru’s AP database tracker, preseason votes are usually the result of three-considerations – where teams finished last spring, how teams compare now, and where they will be by the time March Madness arrives.

 By early December, however, as national powers clash in non-conference games, things will begin shaking out.

 Some of the heavyweights are still in the penthouse section and expected to stay there, such as defending champion Baylor, ranked second; Stanford, ranked third; Maryland, ranked fourth; while Texas A&M, South Carolina, Oregon State, Louisville, and Mississippi State are in the Top 10.

Early in the new decade one change coming in 2023 will be a new format at the NCAA regional level where the Sweet 16 will occur at two sites with eight teams each instead of the four site/four teams structure.

And now that Las Vegas is allowed in the mix with the legalization of facets of sports book gambling, look for that city off the successful WNBA All-Star Game last summer to be a solid bet for one of the sites.

In fact if that action hits the women’s game, a major impact on attention could occur.

 Meanwhile, the second part of the changing of the guard events brings us to the news from Villanova’s Perretta.

 Hired at the age of 22 in 1978, he has stayed at the same institution the entire way, even coaching the Wildcats into the last AIAW Final Four won by Rutgers in 1982, also the first year of the NCAA championships won by Louisiana Tech.

 Contemporaries of Perretta have recently been going by the wayside for a variety of reasons, be it retirement, job dismissal, or health, which sadly in several latter instances led to their passing.

 Since the books closed after Baylor edged Notre Dame in a thrilling championship game in Tampa last April, there are notable coaches and administrators who are now gone  from active duty among the changes.

 Such coaching departures include Cal’s Lindsay Gottlieb, who is now on the staff of the NBA Cleveland Cavaliers; Central Michigan’s Sue Guevara; Georgia Tech’s MaChelle Joseph; Hofstra’s Krista Kilburn-Stevesky; Holy Cross’s Bill Gibbons; North Carolina’s Sylvia Hatchell; Penn State’s Coquese Washington, now an assistant at Oklahoma; Richmond’s Michael Schaefer; UMBC’s Phil Stern; and Tennessee’s Holly Warlick, the Lady Vol Hall of Famer, who was a longtime aide to the late Pat Summitt, replacing the legend when she stepped down in 2012 to fight Alzheimer’s disease, which ultimately resulted in her passing.

A previous season former Saint Joseph’s/Vanderbilt/Ohio State/Chattanooga coach Jim Foster retired. Perretta used to call the women’s hall of famer The King but refused the crown when it became vacant. 

“Can’t do it while Geno is around,” he quipped on the trio’s Philly days.

 Meanwhile, significant changes from last season saw Marquette’s Carolyn Kieger move to Penn State, replaced by Miami (Ohio)’s Megan Duffy; Princeton’s Courtney Banghart move to North Carolina, replaced by Carla Berube, former UConn star and coach of Division III power Tufts; while former Lady Vol star and Missouri State coach Kellie Harper was hired to bring her alma mater back to glory days at Tennessee.

 Some other notable hires are Charmin Smith, who had been a WNBA New York Liberty assistant, to Cal; Nell Fortner, former Texas star, past Olympic head coach, and recently an ESPN studio analyst, returning to active duty with her hire at Georgia Tech; Louisville assistant Samantha Williams to Eastern Kentucky; former UConn star Morgan Valley to Hartford; Hall of Famer and past WNBA and Southern Cal star Cynthia Cooper-Dyke to Texas Southern; and Tammi Reiss, a Syracuse assistant and former Virginia star, to Rhode Island.

 Notable administrators who retired after last season are the ACC Conference’s Nora Lynn Finch; the Pac-12’s Chris Dawson; and the Big 12’s Dru Ann Hancock, all of whom were NCAA women’s basketball tournament committee chairs.

Also retiring was North Carolina State athletic director Debbie Yow, sister of the late N.C. State coach and Hall of Famer Kay Yow, who was also AD at Maryland, and was the first coach with three different teams in the AP women’s poll at Kentucky, Florida, and Oral Roberts.

Also, NCAA officials supervisor June Courteau; and Charlene Curtis, a past coach of Radford and Temple, who later served as supervisor of officials for the ACC and CAA.

 Still around among others dating back to Perretta’s early years as a player or coach, though some at several different stops, are Baylor’s Kim Mulkey, Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer; Rutgers’ C. Vivian Stringer; Northwestern’s Joe McKeown; Fordham’s Stephanie Gaitley, who played for Perretta on that 1982 team; Duke’s Joanne P. McCallie; Notre Dame’s Muffet McGraw; Texas’ Karen Aston;  DePaul’s Doug Bruno; Winthrop’s Lynette Woodard; Maryland’s Brenda Frese; Harvard’s Kathy Delaney-Smith; Quinnipiac’s Tricia Fabbri; Rider’s Lynn Milligan; UNLV’s Kathy Olivier; Washington State’s Kamie Ethridge; and Texas A&M’s Gary Blair.

 Way back when your Guru would regularly attend the College Sports Information Directors Association (CoSIDA) convention, he would join the newer breed in taking on the town after the day’s business, while the sages of the organization would gather in the lobby around such luminaries as TV’s Donn Bernstein, who recently passed away, Beano Cook, and other network notables.

 Then one year, with most of that generation gone, the first night in Lexington (Ky.) the Guru opted to stay in the lobby and began to be approached by the new breed asking questions. 

 Suddenly, the Guru flashed to the past in his memory and exclaimed, “Good God, I’ve become – them.”

 The Guru mentions this because it has always seemed like South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, WNBA Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve, who played at La Salle, and George Washington’s Jen Rizzotti have been frozen in time.

 But Staley (who’s first coaching job was at Temple near her Philadelphia home) is now the U.S. Olympic coach with Reeve and Rizzotti on her staff (along with WNBA Seattle coach Dan Hughes).

 In other words, even with Auriemma and others mentioned above, who are still around, but definitely somewhere in the back stretch, the aforementioned trio is becoming “them” along with a whole group of mentors who weren’t singled out in this exercise.

 And so to close this narrative for the moment, with change being more apparent then ever, savor this season from those on the hardwood to those on the sidelines and celebrate the ones who will be departing somewhere soon down the road and those who will be on hand to take the sport into its next chapters.