In the business of college sports, only winning matters, and for University of Wisconsin women’s basketball head coach Bobbie Kelsey, winning games consistently proved to be too tall a task.
Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez announced Friday that the school decided to fire Kelsey after her fifth season on the job, just two days after Wisconsin finished another disappointing season.
Kelsey, a former star player and assistant at Stanford, was 47-100 overall, 19-65 in the Big Ten and did not seem to have the program on an upward trajectory.
Coming into the season on the hot seat, Kelsey and the Badgers limped to a 7-22 record that saw the team lose 14 of the last 15 contests. With seniors providing most of the team’s production, Alvarez felt this was the best time to make the move.
“In the end you have to have some results, and we just didn’t have the results and the progress that we needed,” Alvarez told Andy Baggot of UWBadgers.com. “We felt at that point we needed a change and shake things up and try and get the program back on track.”
The school will begin a national search immediately and Alvarez told Baggot he still believes it is a desirable job.
He said he will prioritize head coaching experience during the search and will look for someone to use the state’s resources in building a program.
“Ideally, I’d like to find a head coach who has done it — who has a plan on how they recruit and how they coach and the system they run,” Alvarez said. “I want someone to really excite the women’s basketball community in Wisconsin…I want someone I feel confident will build a relationship with the high school coaches in this state and make that a top priority in recruiting.”