What an unusual off-season already, and as we’re finding out now, it began about an hour after the women’s national championship game.
That’s when Notre Dame junior guard Jewell Loyd told coach Muffet McGraw she wasn’t coming back for her senior season and was instead entering the WNBA draft. With only a day to declare before the league’s deadline, the timing after a rough loss to UConn was hardly ideal.
While it was shocking news to many, including her distraught coach, Loyd’s decision wasn’t a complete surprise.
There had been some murmurs that she might leave, since she will turn 22 this calendar year, a WNBA age minimum for early departure.
She said after being taken by Seattle Storm as the first pick in the draft that she was ready, although I think she probably would be no worse than the second pick (behind UConn’s Breanna Stewart) next year.
There’s no salary difference for the lottery picks, who pull in around $50,000 as rookies.
McGraw was still in shock after being told otherwise by Loyd, who has signed up with high-profile women’s hoops agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas of the Wasserman Media Group.
Loyd made “a bad decision,” McGraw said, given the money disparities between male and female pros. But that response sounded a bit tone deaf in light of recent news that McGraw’s coaching position was given a $5 million endowment by Karen Robinson Keyes, a former Irish player, and her husband.
There are some who think this development, as well as the decision by Minnesota sophomore Amanda Zahui B. to leave early (she was drafted second, by Tulsa) is a positive step in the evolution of pro basketball for women.
That needs to be tempered by the fact that Diana Taurasi is sitting out the WNBA season and being paid by her Russian team to do that. Candace Parker, her teammate at UMMC Ekaterinberg, is missing the start of the season for the Los Angeles Sparks, though she’s not getting compensated for that break.
And that Loyd, while a dynamic combo guard who ought to have a terrific career, doesn’t appear to stand out in terms of marketability, what a player can bring beyond basketball and earn substantial endorsement money.
That’s not a knock, since Loyd ought to get six figures playing overseas. It’s unfair to compare her to her former Notre Dame teammate, Skylar Diggins, who’s the only female hoopster in Jay-Z’s Roc Nation Sports agency.
Loyd has done well to hire Colas, who represents 14 WNBA players, including Taurasi, Maya Moore, Brittney Griner, Elena Delle Donne, and Loyd’s new backcourt mate in Seattle, Sue Bird.
Interestingly, there’s been little hand-wringing over the Swedish-born Zahui B., who is 19, meeting the WNBA’s age minimum for non-Americans.
Two other Gopher players have left an NCAA tournament team that made some strides under first-year coach Marlene Stollings. But Minnesota was hardly the only major program to see the revolving door swing more than once.
Also in the Big Ten, first-year Indiana coach Teri Moren lost four players, including starting guard Larryn Brooks and freshman Taylor Agler. They transferred to Texas Tech, where former Hoosier assistant Brandi Poole has landed. Agler is the daughter of new Sparks coach Brian Agler, who hired ex-Indiana coach Curt Miller as an assistant.
Vanderbilt lost three members of its highly regarded five-player freshman class just after the Commodores were knocked out of the SEC Tournament. Twin forwards Audrey-Ann and Khalèann Caron-Goudreau and point guard Paris Kea have departed, destinations still TBA.
Four players have transferred out of Oklahoma State and a top recruit, Texas point guard Amber Ramirez, has decommitted from the Cowgirls following the departure of assistant coach Richard Henderson. Two of them were regulars, including guard Roshunda Johnson (11.3 ppg), who is transferring to Mississippi State.
At Wichita State, four players announced they’re leaving all at once, right as coach Jody Adams was interviewing with Kansas for the head coaching job there.
I stopped trying to count how many kids were on the move, but it seems quite high compared to recent years. Really high. Kids want playing time, or leave after a coaching change is made, the usual reasons apply. But the numbers here are kind of staggering.
And the number of coaches on the move is really low, given the merry-go-round of the last few years, when 50+ jobs changed hands at times. Just three jobs have opened in the “Power 5” conferences.
Two of those, Kansas and Utah, opened right after their teams were eliminated from the Big 12 and Pac 12 tournaments, respectively, and still haven’t been filled.
Word out of Lawrence is that the Jayhawks will announce they’ve hired Stephen F. Austin coach Brandon Schneider to succeed Bonnie Henrickson, who was terminated after 11 seasons.
Very little is publicly known about what’s happening at Utah, where Anthony Levrets was let go. If you want to “change the culture” then it shouldn’t take this long, should it?
Did these ADs have anybody in particular in mind when they pulled the trigger? It doesn’t seem like it, and while it’s understandable to wait until potential candidates in the NCAA tournament end their seasons, we’re nearly two weeks removed from the Final Four.
Last week, after speculation that Notre Dame assistant Niele Ivey was on campus, Georgia hired Joni Crenshaw, Andy Landers‘ associate head coach for the last four years. For the sake of continuity, this is a good thing, and many of her coaching peers lauded the move.
Crenshaw, a former player at Alabama and assistant for the Tide and LSU, will get $575K a year and six years to rebuild a flagging program that hasn’t pulled in the caliber of players that once helped Landers reach the Final Four five times.
There are around 20 other jobs that still haven’t been filled as the spring evaluation period arrives this weekend.
Some more spring cleaning odds and ends:
Florida has added ex-Nebraska assistant Shimmy Gray-Miller and GW aide Bill Ferrara, a Florida grad, and both come with terrific credentials. Amanda Butler was ordered to shake up her coaching staff and then signed an extension. The only holdover assistant coach is ex-Gator star Murriel Page.
Glad to see Theresa Grentz getting back in as a head coach. She was an assistant at Lafayette and will be named today as the successor to the retired Dianne Nolan.
And here’s a partial list of coaches who recently got contract extensions:
- Jose Fernandez, South Florida;
- Vic Schaefer, Mississippi State;
- Matt Insell, Ole Miss;
- Mike Neighbors, Washington;
- Erik Johnson, Boston College;
- Quentin Hillsman, Syracuse;
- Jonathan Tsipis, George Washington.
