“I’m a guy in a woman’s world. I’m coaching women’s basketball. I got into it by accident. The Women’s Basketball Coaches Association and the NCAA, they’re not exactly doing handstands over the fact that some guy from Philadelphia is winning national championships and making sure the whole world knows about it.”
– Geno Auriemma, UConn women’s coach
At the NCAA women’s Final Four in New Orleans, the day before his team won a third consecutive national championship a year ago the brash Connecticut coach spoke the words above.
If Auriemma wasn’t right on the mark, he wasn’t far off.
Little by little, male coaches are becoming more of a minority at the highest level of women’s college basketball.
Six years ago, 66 percent of the Division I coaches were women, according to the NCAA. Of the 324 head coaches this past season, 229 were female (71 percent). In between, the percentage of women’s head coaches rose right at 1 percent per year, roughly two to three head coaching jobs a year changing from a male coach to a female coach.
“Who should coach women?” legendary Texas women’s coach Jody Conradt asked. “I think the right answer is the most qualified person. But all things being equal, then certainly, I think you can make a strong case for women coaching women and men coaching men.”
At a time when the state’s two major universities have been looking to hire women’s coaches, there remains a debate about who is best suited for the job.
“Does it matter and should it matter if a women’s basketball team is coached by a woman? Yes and yes,” former CU coach Ceal Barry told The Denver Post two weeks ago after the university reopened its search for her replacement.
Colorado is set to announce the hiring of Kathy McConnell-Miller of Tulsa today, after Kevin Borseth of Wisconsin-Green Bay withdrew his name.
When new CU athletic director Mike Bohn reopened the search, he said gender was no issue and that he wanted “the best coach and the best fit, whether it’s male or female.”
CU interviewed three women finalists this time around.
Conradt said the incremental progress women have made in landing Division I jobs is a natural progression.
“I go back a long way, so I can tell you that when I was in high school and college and thinking about what I wanted to be, it never occurred to me that I could be a coach,” said Conradt, 63. “I’d never seen anything but male coaches. So you felt like it wasn’t a field that was open to you.
“Things changed dramatically with Title IX. We’re now seeing more and more women in the coaching pool. There are so many women who are playing now and getting more and more passionate about the game, that I think we’ll see dramatic increases in that pool.”
There never may come a time when women have what men have in Division I men’s college basketball – 100 percent of the coaching jobs.
But former CSU women’s coach Tom Collen, now at Louisville, said demand for the top jobs in women’s basketball is becoming greater all the time and qualified women are finally being rewarded.
“I believe we’re entering into an era that demands that athletic directors have to look for the best candidate without regard to gender because budgets have grown into the million-dollar-plus range, and I just don’t think you can afford to put that kind of money into a program and not have a positive result.
“In that way, I think the women’s game is becoming more like the men’s game, and I don’t think there’s any question the pool of women’s coaches is getting stronger and stronger.”
At CSU, where the past three coaches have been men, athletic director Mark Driscoll is believed to favor Bowling Green coach Curt Miller, a former CSU assistant under Collen, as his new coach.
There are young male coaches, such as Matt Daniel – an assistant under Barry for one year – determined to make a go of it in the women’s game.
“I’m sure that there are a lot of young guys trying to do what I’m trying to do,” he said. “I know some people feel that women coaching women is the way it should be, and that may very well be the case. But I still think people want the best coach, whether it’s male or female.”
Staff writer Joseph Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-5458 or jsanchez@denverpost.com.
