WBB: The Badger Coaching Search

[Ignatius L Hoops]

http://host.madison.com/wsj/sports/...cle_1df0aa96-cb3f-5ee7-bada-a6c6c554aa0c.html

This would be an upgrade:

Jonathan Tsipis, the women’s basketball coach at George Washington University, has emerged as the leading candidate to succeed Bobbie Kelsey as coach of the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team, according to multiple sources.


Tsipis has spent the past four seasons at George Washington, where he compiled a 92-38 record (.708), leading the Colonials to the Atlantic 10 Conference title and NCAA tournament bids the past two years. GW lost to Kansas State 56-51 in the first round of the NCAA tournament on Friday.

If he gets the job, Tsipis, 43, would become the seventh coach of the Badgers and the first man to lead the women’s program.

Before going to GW, Tsipis (SIP-iss) spent nine seasons as an assistant coach for Muffet McGraw at Notre Dame, the last four as associate head coach. He was recruiting coordinator during that time as Notre Dame made five Sweet 16 appearances and had top-20 recruiting classes in each of his nine seasons.



Other candidates: I assume Borseth's name was a courtesy mention. Or perhaps he really, really hated his time in Ann Arbor or came to appreciate Big Ten money after returning to UWGB.

Other possible candidates that had surfaced since Kelsey was fired on March 4 include Courtney Banghart of Princeton, Katie Abrahamson-Henderson of Albany and Kevin Borseth of UW-Green Bay.

 

[Otis]

Why is this on a Gopher board?

 

[Ski U Mah Gopher]

Why is this on a Gopher board?

The same reason the NCAA threads are on the board.

This is also a college basketball board.

Maybe there should be a women's coaching change thread...

 

[Ignatius L Hoops]

Why is this on a Gopher board?

The Gophers and Badgers happen to play in the same conference and recruit against each other.

Adding some additional, probably unnecessarily tangled, annoyance: After Tsipis left his assistant job at Notre Dame to take the George Washington job, Beth Cunningham (of the now infamous Norwood Teague VCU Title IX settlement) left her VCU head coaching job to take the vacated assistant job at Notre Dame. VCU (Mike Ellis-remember him?) then hired Marlene Stollings. Stollings, who, of course, is now at Minnesota, coached against Tsipis in the Atlantic 10 conference.

 

[Ignatius L Hoops]

http://host.madison.com/wsj/sports/...cle_f51f62be-244e-5722-8323-7beeca4fd9b1.html

It's an odd way for word to leak out but Jonathon Tsipis will be named new Badger Head Coach replacing Bobbie Kelsey.

[BThe Executive Committee of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will hold a teleconference Tuesday to approve contracts for new coaches to lead the UW men’s hockey and women’s basketball programs.

Tony Granato could be introduced as early as Wednesday as the fifth head coach in the modern history of the hockey program, succeeding Mike Eaves.

Jonathan Tsipis is expected to be announced later this week as the seventh coach, and the first man, to lead the women’s basketball program as it enters its 43rd season



Tsipis (SIP-iss) has some experience turning around a floundering program. After helping build Notre Dame into a national power in nine seasons as a top assistant, he took over a George Washington program that had gone 25-61 over the previous three seasons.

He led the Colonials to a 14-16 record his first season and took them to the WNIT the next season with a 23-11 mark. The past two seasons saw GW go a combined 55-11 with two Atlantic-10 championships and two NCAA tournament bids.

A North Carolina graduate, he began his coaching career as an undergraduate assistant under Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski at Duke in 1995-96. He spent six seasons as an assistant with the men’s programs at Cornell, Le Moyne and Elon, before joining the women’s staff at Notre Dame under another Hall of Fame coach, Muffet McGraw. He was promoted to associate head coach and recruiting coordinator in 2008

 

[thatjanelpick]

A fine choice, obviously, but am I alone in thinking he's also a disappointing one because it seems like "somebody" has decided it's no longer something to be sought after to hire women to coach women's sports? Given that it's virtually unheard of for women to coach men at this level and that Wisconsin already has a man coaching their women's volleyball team and their women's hockey team and that I don't think they've ever had a male women's basketball coach, it seems like this is a bummer. (And a trend: All four of the women's Final Four head coaches are men, three of them fairly recent hires.)

 

[Ignatius L Hoops]

A fine choice, obviously, but am I alone in thinking he's also a disappointing one because it seems like "somebody" has decided it's no longer something to be sought after to hire women to coach women's sports?

No, it is disappointing. Tsipis seems to have been the largest, if not the only, blip on the Badger radar. Yes, his credentials are impeccable compared to say Dennis Wolff who had no experience in WBB when hired by Virginia Tech or the equally inexperienced Jimmy Dykes' hiring at Arkansas. Wolff was a predictable failure and is now being replaced by Kenny Brooks. And, yes, Tsipis is Badger WBB's first male head coach. His salary and contract terms will be interesting.

 

[Ignatius L Hoops]

http://www.newsweek.com/youve-got-male-first-time-only-men-coaching-womens-final-four-teams-442213

Well, I agree with Kara Lawson: It's less about men coaching women's basketball than it is about why there aren't women coaching in men's basketball.

Rueck’s counterpart on Monday night, Baylor’s Kim Mulkey, led Louisiana Tech to a pair of national championships as a player in 1981 and ’82. She served as an assistant at Tech for 15 years under Leon Barmore, the first man to guide a women’s team to the national championship (1988). When Barmore decided to retire after the 2000 season, Louisiana Tech made Mulkey what she considered to be an insulting offer, so she made her exodus to Waco (and Barmore stayed on in Ruston for a few more seasons before eventually become Mulkey’s assistant at Baylor).

Mulkey has since led the Bears, previously a cipher in the oligarchical realm of women’s college hoops, to a pair of national championships, including a 40-0 season in 2012. “I know I’ve never worried about how good a player my coach was or their gender,” says Lawson. “I only cared if they knew what they were doing. What baffles me is how there are no women on men’s coaching staffs. In any workplace, how do you expect to have a successful team when you eliminate 50 percent of the possible workforce from consideration without even examining if they’re qualified?”[/I]

 

[Atl Gopher]

Why is this on a Gopher board?

I went to the men's game in 2014. I was able to schedule a business meeting in Madison during the afternoon of the game. I bought my ticket at the last second through one of the ticket services. I paid more than the guy sitting next to me paid for his season tickets, yet this service felt it necessary apparently to let their athletic department know what i did. Interestingly enough I have never received any communication from the Badgers' athletic department until yesterday. I got an email about this hire.

When i saw the who the email came from my gut reaction was to close my GMAIL account and maybe even through away my laptop. The laptop is brand new and my CFO (who is also my wife) might not understand. Otis, some how I suspect that you would.

 

[Ignatius L Hoops]

http://host.madison.com/wsj/sports/...cle_3e5425ac-7e69-532f-8ada-678309db424d.html

Tsipis takes over and joins the crowd visiting Sidney Cooks.

Jonathan Tsipis hit the ground running in his new job as head coach of the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team.

Even before his introductory press conference Thursday afternoon at the Nicholas-Johnson Pavilion, he had met with the returning players he is inheriting from Bobbie Kelsey, spoken on the phone to each of the six members of the 2016 recruiting class and made home visits to the top two players in the state for the class of 2017 — Madison Edgewood’s Estella Moschkau and Sidney Cooks of Kenosha St. Joseph