Move over, Jimmy Dykes.
You’re not the only newly hired coach your peers have been buzzing about this week.
Two days after Arkansas stunned the women’s coaching community by tapping the ESPN analyst to succeed Tom Collen, one of the storied franchises in the sport topped that.
On Wednesday Louisiana Tech introduced Tyler Summitt as its new head coach. He’s 23 years old, graduated from Tennessee two years ago, and in the interim has served as an assistant at Marquette.
The son of Pat Summitt — who was on hand in Ruston, along with another retired coaching legend, Louisiana Tech’s Leon Barmore — certainly “won the press conference,” as the parlance goes, just as Dykes did on Sunday in Fayetteville.
Summitt and La Tech AD Tommy McClelland — who’s 32, and has run Division I athletic programs (also at McNeese State) since his mid-20s — addressed the age issue right up front.
“If that’s my biggest weakness,” said Summitt fils, “that’s fine because no matter what I do that’s going to change.” 
But like the Dykes hire, concerns wafting through the women’s coaching community are a bit more complicated than that.
Even after Summitt announced he was bringing on his mother’s longtime former assistant Mickie DeMoss, once a standout at Louisiana Tech, the grumbling was not just about the young man’s lack of experience.
This also was about his name, and specifically, the thought that someone so tender could rise so quickly primarily because he carries such an important connection.
Even more importantly, what do such “name” hires mean for the hundreds of coaches diligently working their way up through the ranks, preparing themselves to be head coaches, only to be ignored by an AD who appears to be looking to make a splash?
Unlike the Dykes hire, though, Women’s Basketball Coaches Association CEO Beth Bass didn’t issue a statement expressing any disappointment.
Some of the biggest coaching names in the sport were asked, during a Women’s Final Four conference call on Wenesday, about what they were doing at 23, and how they might have fared as head coaches at that age.
After a long burst of laughter, UConn’s Geno Auriemma said: “I was driving a truck for my dad’s friend who owned five supermarkets, and I wasn’t sure I was good enough to keep that job.”
He said it’s been “an interesting couple of days in women’s basketball” for hiring coaches, and that “any kind of publicity is good publicity.”
As for Tyler Summitt, Auriemma said, “I’m sure he’s going to be overwhelmed at times, and I’m sure he’s got a lot of great ideas that he’s going to implement, and I’m sure he’s going to have a great staff that’s going to help him. That’s just a tall task for a 30-year-old [Auriemma’s age when he was hired at UConn], much less a 23-year-old.”
Said Brenda Frese of Maryland: “He’s more than ready. I’m sure he will do a tremendous job.”
That’s what those defending the Summitt hire, and Tyler himself, have been stressing. Beyond being a coach’s son and a regular on the Lady Volunteers’ sideline since he could crawl, Tyler Summitt has coached AAU basketball and learned from Tennessee men’s coaches Bruce Pearl and Cuonzo Martin as a walk-on.
“I’ve been an assistant coach with a head coaching mentality my entire life.”
But the “mature beyond his years” mantra might come across as a bit thin for skeptics who heard Dykes talk about the hundreds of TV games he’s called, and thousands of practices he’s “observed,” since he hasn’t actively coached in more than 20 years.
When coaches gather in coming days at the Women’s Final Four in Nashville, the topic won’t really be about Jimmy Dykes or Tyler Summitt, although some of the reaction has been intensely personal.
The larger concern is about a perception that their sport isn’t being taken seriously by some athletics directors, since such hires rarely, if ever, take place in the men’s game and in football.
(Jeff Eisenberg, who writes The Dagger college basketball blog for Yahoo! Sports, puts the Summitt hire in the context of other young coaching hires in the men’s game.)
Two hires don’t necessarily indicate a trend, but the frustration level is rising.
I heard from an agent who represents an experienced women’s coach with “championship” success whom he claims couldn’t get an interview with Louisiana Tech.
But the agent, who has a handful of women’s coaches amid a clientele mostly of those in the men’s game, said he’s noticed how differently some ADs regard filling a women’s job.
“It’s almost like they’re playing with house money,” the agent said. “If it works out, fine. If not, you go out and hire somebody else.
“I don’t get it. What about serving your student-athletes by hiring the best qualified coaches you can? There’s no accountability.”
While the definition of “qualified” can be subjective, the quandary about how to prepare to compete for jobs has taken on a new dimension with high-profile, out-of-the-box hires.
McClelland said he spoke to more than 30 people about Tyler Summitt, and had a five-hour interview with him during which “we really grilled him” with questions about every phase of running a once-great program trying to find its way back into the women’s basketball elite.
McClelland said he’s convinced he’s hired “one of the greatest coaching minds” in the game, but Summitt acknowledged his biggest asset starting out will be developing a thick skin.
“There’s always going to be somebody who says you’re not ready, it’s because of your last name,” Summitt said. “It doesn’t bother me. God is my strength. I have an incredible support group.
“They can call me whatever they want. It’s not’s going to bother me because we’re going to focus on our process.”
