In the early 2000s, because the tide was turning towards UConn’s aspect within the Tennessee-UConn women’s basketball rivalry, the late Pat Summitt walked into her athletic director’s workplace and instructed Joan Cronan she wished to make sure the Huskies have been rescheduled the following season it doesn’t matter what.
Cronan, who oversaw women’s sports activities at Tennessee, hesitated. The Huskies have been constructing and, in latest seasons, had gotten the higher of the Lady Vols, prompting questions on whether or not the losses would tarnish their fame or be detrimental to their recruiting. Cronan questioned why Summitt wished to proceed scheduling the contentious rivalry.
“Her answer to me was so consistent with her. ‘It’s good for the game, Joan. It’s good for the game,’” Cronan remembered. “On every step of her journey, she wanted to always do what was good for the game.”
Summitt’s dedication to rising the sport is a component of her legacy and has been essential to how women’s basketball obtained up to now in 2026 — women’s school groups receiving financial units for NCAA Tournament performances, record-setting tv offers and viewership numbers booming. Tennessee won’t be the “Point A” for all of the expansion within the sport, but it surely’s a component of the inspiration, little doubt.
When Summitt was combating to get women’s basketball on TV, utilizing the extraordinary Tennessee-UConn rivalry to get eyes on the game, she didn’t know that sometime women’s school basketball gamers would turn into some of essentially the most well-known athletes within the nation, that the WNBA would have millionaire gamers or that the game would have an plain foothold within the American conscience.
Thanks partly as a result of Summitt used her stature to advocate for the game, that’s the place we are. And as a result of of it, she’s one of a small group of coaches who’ve turn into single monikered: Pat. Tara. Muffet. Geno. Dawn.
Those 5 coaches (Summitt, in addition to Tara VanDerveer at Stanford, Muffet McGraw at Notre Dame, Geno Auriemma at UConn and Dawn Staley at South Carolina) have accounted for 19 of the final 25 nationwide titles, however solely two are nonetheless on the sideline.
Right now, it’s Staley and Auriemma who carry the torch. When the largest modifications occur within the sport, it’s these two whom followers, media and, frankly, different coaches want to hear converse on the matter. Title IX, income share, pay, match fashions — Staley’s and Auriemma’s ideas carry a lot weight for women’s basketball. But Auriemma is 72, and Staley, 55, has more and more turn into the goal of NBA teaching hypothesis, and after interviewing with the New York Knicks in 2025, mentioned she would’ve taken the job had it been supplied to her.
If or at any time when these modifications come, the mantle of women’s basketball will likely be extra vacant than the game deserves throughout this time of women’s basketball explosion. As the women’s school basketball panorama evolves, it wants coaches to be greater than only a half of the dialog. It wants coaches main it and utilizing their positions to push the sport ahead, much like Summitt.
As a lot as Summitt and Auriemma sparred on the sideline (and in information conferences), Auriemma noticed — and sees — his function within the sport equally.
“The things that I’ve always advocated for were: How do we give everybody the same opportunity that I had in building a program from nothing, growing a program? How do we help young coaches?” Auriemma mentioned.
To that finish, Auriemma mentioned he has all the time welcomed younger coaches into his practices to see how UConn does what it does. Even throughout these fierce rivalry years, Auriemma obliged when two Tennessee graduate assistants requested to go to Storrs and watch a apply.
Former Stanford coach VanDerveer was a fierce Title IX advocate who fought to verify ladies may very well be in management positions. As such, throughout her almost 40-year tenure at Stanford, VanDerveer all the time had all-female teaching staffs. McGraw, at Notre Dame, ultimately did the identical in South Bend and was much more vocal about ladies in management roles.
Coach @MuffetMcGraw has all the time been about empowering ladies.
Today was no completely different.#GoIrish pic.twitter.com/yOiwwFBS65
— Notre Dame Women’s Basketball (@ndwbb) April 4, 2019
South Carolina coach Staley has used her basketball platform to advocate for a number of causes — equal pay and extra illustration for Black coaches.
Women’s basketball lastly appears as if it has handed the purpose of needing to combat for its mere existence and is now targeted on increasing its stake within the broader sports activities tradition. But as that development occurs, the game is extra in want than ever of coaches who will help form this subsequent period to develop in the way in which it ought to.
“Integrity and authenticity — that’s what coaches have to have,” VanDerveer mentioned of this second. “It’s not selfish, it’s not self-serving. But what is going to help the game grow and be sustainable?”
The coaches who’ve had the loudest microphones over the previous couple of many years have additionally been those who’ve received essentially the most, to no shock. Though there’s a bevy of coaches on this Sweet 16 spherical who may sometime be a part of Staley and Auriemma on that platform because the pre-eminent voices in women’s school hoops, nobody is at present on their stage.
UCLA’s Cori Close, a former Women’s Basketball Coaches Association president, has been vocal on identify, picture and likeness issues and student-athlete welfare, however she hasn’t led the Bruins to a nationwide title, and whether or not it’s proper or improper, profitable large does appear to be a component of the platform constructing, at the least prior to now. Kara Lawson has led Duke to 3 consecutive Sweet 16 appearances and is the 2028 Olympic coach however mentioned she isn’t seeking to be “the voice of the sport.” Vanderbilt’s Shea Ralph, in her first Sweet 16 as a head coach, spent a lot of her profession at UConn with Auriemma and appears primed to turn into an vital voice.
“We wear a lot of hats as coaches, but I think we have to be part of the conversation because we’re the ones that are in the locker rooms. We’re the one recruiting these young women. We’re the ones that are navigating the landscape and also in charge of leading young women,” Ralph mentioned. “I think it’s still our job as coaches to protect the college student-athlete mold and model.”
This isn’t a difficulty that solely impacts women’s school basketball. In latest years, a number of school sports activities have seen an exodus of longtime, revered coaches. In the previous couple of males’s school basketball seasons alone, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, North Carolina coach Roy Williams, Villanova coach Jay Wright, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim and Virginia coach Tony Bennett stepped away from the sideline. Those 5 coaches mixed for greater than 4,000 wins and 9 of the final 20 nationwide titles and carried the lads’s basketball’s mantle for a few years.
For many years in school soccer, Alabama coach Nick Saban, who received seven nationwide championships, was seen because the pre-eminent voice for the game. Even after he retired in 2023, he has remained a outstanding determine within the school soccer panorama, showing on ESPN’s “College GameDay” weekly and lately being a component of the White House roundtable on school sports activities. Now, when the largest modifications affecting school soccer occur, followers are left questioning: What does Saban assume?
In women’s school basketball, that function usually falls to Auriemma and Staley. What does Geno take into consideration this? What does Dawn take into consideration that?
But to Summitt’s level — in all the time doing what’s good for the sport — it’s crucial for women’s basketball to search out voices amongst coaches who can proceed to push the game ahead. That will likely be essential not only for when Auriemma and Staley are out of the game but in addition to search out these coaches who can, like Auriemma and Staley did, take this present model of women’s basketball to a spot not even they’ll think about.