This past Friday, the Athletic Board made decisions on the contracts of six different UW coaches. Three were extended; three were merely maintained.
When Lisa Stone, the head coach of the women’s basketball team, did not receive an extension, it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to anyone.
Over the past several days, Stone has added a few names to her coaching staff. She first hired Kathi Bennett, who was the head coach at Indiana from 2000-2005 and also coached at UW-Oskhosh and the University of Evansville. Her father, Dick, is well-known around Madison, as he was the former UW men’s basketball coach.
Stone also brought Oties Epps on board, completing her new-and-improved staff. Most recently, Epps was an assistant coach at Cleveland State. These hirings come on the heels of the retirement of former assistant coach Donna Freitag, and former assistant Tasha McDowell took the head coach gig at Western Michigan.
Bringing in some new faces to a struggling program is all well and good, and it may add a bit of life into a team that failed to live up to its preseason expectations this past year. But adding a few assistant coaches isn’t going to fix all that is broken with UW women’s basketball.
As one of the team’s beat writers a year ago, I saw the things Stone’s team was capable of. They boasted one of the best players in the Big Ten in guard Jolene Anderson, who was complemented nicely by fellow guard Janese Banks. In their junior seasons, they were the veteran leaders of a young team — one that had eight freshmen — and lifted the Badgers to a berth in the WNIT tournament, eventually falling in the tourney’s championship game.
Stone had her players buying into the system, as team unity was stressed heavily — the slogan was even emblazoned on the back of their practice uniforms.
The very next season, the team lost just one player — freshman guard Ericka Engen, a walk-on who saw limited playing time in just 12 games. Aside from Engen, the Badger corps remained intact, with Anderson and Banks again anchoring the group.
Predicted by some to claim stake to the Big Ten title, UW finished far from expectations. The team ended with a 16-14 record — losing games they would have won the previous year — and went just 9-9 in the conference to finish eighth in the Big Ten standings. They then went on to lose big to Illinois in the first round of the Big Ten tournament and lost a home game to Villanova in the first round of the WNIT.
There was no reason this group shouldn’t have at least repeated their finish from 2006-07. They brought back the exact same group of personnel, both players and coaches. Yet for whatever reason, they continued to falter, sputtering to a mediocre season.
Last month, a fellow columnist of mine argued that the Badgers will be better without Anderson. He argued that UW relied too heavily on her night in and night out. If she went cold, so too did Wisconsin.
I’m not so sure this is the case. Yes, I agree that it’s often better to have a well-balanced team than one dominated by a superstar (see: this year’s men’s basketball team compared to the Alando Tucker-led squad of a year ago). But there might be another face they might be better off without, and it’s not the school’s all-time leading scorer.
I can’t say for sure if bringing in a new head coach would do the trick. As is usually the case whenever a new coach is hired, there would be a process of rebuilding. It takes time before the new coach and his or her players gel with each other. But once someone new is in place and has established him or herself, that’s when the results are seen.
It appears as if the current women’s basketball program may be in for a few long seasons ahead. The team’s best player of all time is now gone, and next year’s roster will boast only one senior (forward/center Caitlin Gibson). Shaking things up a bit may produce a solid foundation for years to come.
The old saying advises that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But what if it is? To me, an eighth-place finish for a team expected to finish first seems like something’s broken.
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Tyler is a junior majoring in journalism. Disagree that the women’s basketball team needs a coaching change? Let him know at [email protected].
