Tamika Williams-Jeter today finds college coaching better the second time around. She began her career in 2002 as an Ohio State graduate assistant women’s basketball coach and was promoted to full-time status in 2003. She is now in her first season back at the school as an assistant coach.
The Big Ten is a lot different today than it was in her first go-around, Williams-Jeter told the MSR last week after OSU defeated Minnesota at Williams Arena. “I think there’s more parity now,” she said. “The first time I was here, you had your dominant teams and your bottom feeders [in the conference].”
The Dayton, Ohio native was the nation’s number-one high school player back in the late 1990s and part of UConn’s “greatest recruiting class of 1998” along with Ashja Jones, Swin Cash and Sue Bird. The quartet in four years amassed a 136-9 record, three Final Fours, two national titles, and an undefeated season (39-0 in 2001-02). All four later were WNBA first-round picks and U.S. Olympians.
“We were told that we sucked every day,” Williams-Jeter joked. “We really thought we were awful. But it was so much fun.” The student-athlete also made the dean’s list, was Student-Athlete Advisory Committee president, and earned an interpersonal communications degree.
Williams was the sixth overall pick of the 2002 WNBA Draft by Minnesota and played six of her seven pro seasons with the Lynx. She hit the winning basket in the team’s first-ever playoff game in 2003, and she still holds the league’s single-season shooting percentage record (.668).
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