Kathy McConnell-Miller, women’s basketball coach at Tulsa for the past six seasons, will be introduced today as Ceal Barry’s replacement at Colorado – barring a last-minute change of mind.
University officials have a news conference scheduled at 11 a.m. to announce the hiring. Unlike Kevin Borseth, the Wisconsin-Green Bay coach who backed out of the job April 14 three hours before his news conference, McConnell-Miller has assured CU officials she will accept the offer.
McConnell-Miller was in Tulsa on Tuesday evening for an athletic awards banquet and couldn’t be reached for comment. Earlier in the day she told the Tulsa World: “I’m very excited about taking over the program at CU. This is the one job I wanted. Ceal Barry has done an exceptional job there, and they’ve got a great tradition in the Big 12.”
McConnell-Miller, 37, compiled a 91-88 record at Tulsa, including back-to-back 19-11 seasons and trips to the WNIT the past two years.
She comes from a prominent Pittsburgh basketball family. Four of her seven siblings are coaches, including Suzie McConnell Serio, coach of the Minnesota Lynx of the WNBA.
New CU athletic director Mike Bohn interviewed three finalists over the weekend. In addition to McConnell-Miller, Bohn interviewed Kamie Ethridge, a longtime assistant coach at Kansas State, and Melissa McFerrin, a former WNBA administrator who just completed her first year as head coach at American University in Washington, D.C.
“I think it’s a really smart choice,” said Boise State coach and former Barry assistant Jen Warden, who competed against McConnell-Miller in the Western Athletic Conference. “I think people will be really excited about Kathy. She’s very good with her players. She’s an excellent coach and she’s a great recruiter. She’s just a very classy woman.”
McConnell-Miller and her husband, Brad Miller, have three young children. Before taking the job at Tulsa in 1999, McConnell-Miller was an assistant coach for eight years, including four at Illinois. She played collegiately at Virginia in the late 1980s, helping her team make the Sweet 16 twice and the Elite Eight once.
With the Golden Hurricane, she took over a program that had one winning season in its 14-year history. Her task at CU is to replace the legendary Barry, who led her team to a 427-242 record in 22 seasons.
Asked to describe McConnell-Miller’s teams, Warden said: “Her post players are usually very well-developed. They can shoot from high post, and they can drive from high post. … She likes to run. She likes the up-tempo game and her guards are disciplined and usually pretty athletic.
“On defense, mostly she plays man and her teams are typically very good rebounding teams.”
Staff writer Joseph Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-5458 or jsanchez@denverpost.com.
