Black women coaches are having great success in this year’s Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament.
While the biggest name remains South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, many other Black women made their presence known during March Madness, with many advancing into the latter rounds.
Take Ole Miss head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin for instance. She’s been Mississippi’s head coach since 2018 and she’s led the Rebels to two Sweet 16 appearances in the last three years. This year, her 5th-seeded team destroyed Ball State in the first round and upset no.4 Baylor before losing a hard-fought 76-62 game to no.1 ranked UCLA.
Another team is the Duke Blue Devils led by head coach Kara Lawson. Since taking the reigns in the Pandemic shortened 2020 season, Lawson has pushed the team to great success with a 97-40 record during her tenure, which includes three straight NCAA tournament appearances and an ACC Tournament Championship.
This year Lawson’s team made the Sweet 16 for a second straight year and advanced to the Elite 8, where they lost to reigning champion South Carolina and head coach Dawn Staley.
In South Bend, Niele Ivey has Notre Dame in championship contention every season since taking over in 2020. After going 10-10 before the Pandemic shut everything down, Ivey had made four straight NCAA Tournaments, won two regular-season ACC titles and one ACC Tournament Championship and has amassed a record of 117-38.
This year, Ivey led the no.3 Irish to wins over Stephen F. Austin and Michigan by a combined 73 points. They faced no.2 TCU in the Sweet 16 and lost a tough one by a score of 71-62.
And of course, there’s Dawn Staley.
Staley has quickly risen to become one of the greatest coaches in all of basketball today and has a resume that includes 3x National Champion, which could easily be four if not for the Pandemic; South Carolina was 32-1 that season before the Tournament was canceled. She’s also made the NCAA Tournament every year since 2011 (minus the Pandemic-shortened season).
Staley is the model that coaches aspire to become as she’s a Hall of Fame player and will be a Hall of Fame coach as well.
She’s only the second Black woman head coach to win a national championship (Carolyn Peck, Purdue, 1999) and is the first Black head coach, male or female, to win more than one NCAA Tournament title.
This year, South Carolina, after demolishing Tennessee Tech in the first round, has faced and beaten great teams including Indiana, Maryland and Duke to make its fifth straight Final Four under Staley.
Since taking over in 2008, Staley has led the team to a record of 473-109 and is now the highest-paid coach in women’s basketball.
This year’s Sweet 16 featured four teams led by Black women, but the overall tournament had a number of Black women head coaches including Vanessa Blair-Lewis at George Mason, Carrie Moore at Harvard, Trina Patterson at UNC Greensboro, Stacie Terry-Hutson at San Diego St., Charmin Smith at Cal, Chelsea Lyles at Florida Gulf Coast and Destinee Rogers at Arkansas St.
Heading to the Final Four, Dawn Staley is the only Black coach left, which means she has a shot at her fourth NCAA title, which would be fourth in the last six years.
Staley is the model of success and with the number of Black women coaches building successful programs in college basketball, she will have lots of competition for years to come.
