Whalen and Peck Highlight Five-Member Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2023

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

 

The Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame Induction Class of 2023 was announced Sunday afternoon during the Connecticut-Iowa Phil Knight Legacy championship highlighted by the selection of University of Minnesota coach and former WNBA star Lindsay Whalen and former Purdue coach and now ESPN analyst Carolyn Peck.

 

Also named were Donna Lopiano, former Texas women’s athletics director and chief executive officer of the Women’s Sports Foundation; Referee Lisa Mattingly; and Cathy Boswell, former Illinois State all-American and 1984 member of the first USA Olympic Gold medalist squad.

 

Whalen, who also starred at her alma mater she now coaches and played on the WNBA multi-championship Minnesota Lynx, was an inductee into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame class in Springfield, Mass., this past September.

 

She is also an Olympic gold medalist.

 

Peck was a head coach at Purdue University (1997-99), the WNBA Orlando Miracle (1999-01), and the University of Florida (2002-07) and her 1999 NCAA national championship Boilermakers squad is still is the only Big Ten team to win a title in the sport.

 

She was the only Black coach to win an NCAA title until Dawn Staley guided South Carolina to its two championships in 2017 and last spring.

 

Additionally, the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) was named recipient of the Trailblazers of the game award while for the first time since its inception as the Love of the Game Award, the honorees are the Dust Bowl Girls.

 

Lopiano earned her nod as a contributor; Mattingly as an official; and Boswell as a veteran player.

 

 Though this year’s class seems smaller than recent seasons, the organization bylaws allow a 4-7 class size each year. Several sources confirmed this will be the smallest class since the reduction to groups of six or seven following the mass sizes honored in the early years of the ceremony. 

 

The Love of the Game Award was created in 2015 in memory and awarded to the late Lauren Hill, the Mount St. Joseph’s player, whose story captured the nation’s attention the previous winter.

 

Diagnosed just prior to her freshman season with pediatric brain cancer and given a short life span she was able to play in her team’s first game in front of a sellout crowd of 10,000 in Xavier’s Cintas Center in Cincinnati where the game was moved to accommodate the ticket demand.

 

At halftime she received the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) Pat Summitt Most Courageous Award.

 

Summitt, the late legendary Tennessee coach herself battling Alzheimer’s Disease at the time, made a surprise appearance to help with the presentation.

 

At the height of the Great Depression, Sam Babb, the charismatic basketball coach of tiny Oklahoma Presbyterian College, began dreaming. Like so many others, he wanted a reason to have hope. 

 

Traveling from farm to farm, he recruited talented, hardworking young women and offered them a chance at a better life: a free college education if they would come play for his basketball team, the Cardinals.

 

Despite their fears of leaving home and the sacrifices that would be faced by their families, the women followed Babb and his dream.

 

 He shaped the Cardinals into a formidable team, and something extraordinary began to happen. With passion for the game and heartfelt loyalty to one another and their coach, they won every game.

 

 The team’s improbable journey leads to an epic showdown with the prevailing national champions, helmed by the legendary Babe Didrikson.

 

DUST BOWL GIRLS captures a moment in American history when female athletes faced incredible scrutiny, and when a struggling nation most needed inspiration and hope.

 

 Through sacrifice, determination, teamwork, and heart, this unlikely group led by a resourceful coach beat the odds, achieving much more than a championship season.

 

This year the induction ceremony in Knoxville, Tenn., the home of the WBHOF, has been moved up from what has been an early June weekend date to April 29, allowing greater attendance from WNBA individuals who in the past have had difficult attending due to conflicts with the season schedule.national champions, helmed by the legendary Babe Didrikso