How former UConn players and assistants fared as head coaches this season

Four former UConn players and assistants helmed a Division I program during the 2021-22 campaign.

Apr 28, 2022

Photo by Matthew Maxey/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Welcome to the UConn WBB Weekly, a recap of everything that happened in the world of UConn women’s basketball over the past week from the team that runs The UConn Blog.

Sign up to get the Weekly in your inbox every Thursday or subscribe to get our premium newsletter which includes film breakdowns, analysis, recruiting coverage and more!

Headlines

From the UConn WBB Weekly Premium:

How former UConn players and assistants fared as head coaches this season

Geno Auriemma’s success at UConn may be unmatched but his coaching tree is still relatively young. This past season, two of his former assistants undertook their first year at new head coaching positions, one former player went through her second season in charge while another will get her first chance to lead a Division I program next year.

Here’s how UConn’s former players and assistants fared as head coaches at the Division I level in 2021-22.

Shea Ralph — Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt went 16-19 in Ralph’s first season as head coach, though that record needs appropriate context. The Commodores went just 4-12 in a brutally tough SEC but scored wins over Arkansas, Kentucky, No. 15 Florida and No. 15 Texas A&M — the latter three of which made the NCAA Tournament. Vanderbilt also went 12-5 at home and won one game in the SEC Tournament (more than Kim Mulkey and LSU did) and two in the WNIT. Its two postseason losses were by a combined three points.

Carla Berube — Princeton

In her third year in charge of Princeton, Berube finished just her second campaign at the helm after the Ivy League canceled sports during the pandemic-affected 2020-21 season. The Tigers went 25-5 with a perfect 14-0 record in conference play, claiming both the Ivy League regular season and tournament titles.

They were given the 11-seed in the Bridgeport Regional, where they beat Rhyne Howard and 6-seeded Kentucky in the opening round to extend their win streak to 18 games. Princeton then fell two points short of upsetting 3-seed Indiana in the second round.

Berube is a serial winner, having amassed a 384-96 record at Division III Tufts before making the leap to Division I. Through two seasons, she owns a 51-6 mark with the Tigers — an 89.5 win percentage.

Marisa Moseley — Wisconsin

While Berube has gotten off to a fast start at Princeton, Moseley has a much bigger build on her hands at Wisconsin. Last March, she took over a team coming off a 5-21 season and went 8-21 in year zero.

There were signs of progress, though. The Badgers won five Big Ten contests — their most since 2014-15. The majority of those also came towards the end of the season as the team started to buy into the vision of Moseley and her staff — which includes former UConn guard Caroline Doty.

“There was much more trust and belief in what we were trying to do,” Moseley told Bucky’s Fifth Quarter. “We learned how to prepare much better and I learned the abilities that each kid had more and how I could use them in different ways.”

Tonya Cardoza — Temple

After 14 seasons at the helm at Temple, Cardoza was fired following a 13-15 campaign this past year. She’s the winningest coach in program history with a 251-188 overall record but finished with a winning record just once over the last five seasons.

Tamika Williams-Jeter — Dayton

In 2011, Williams-Jeter left her job as an assistant at Kansas and took a job in the private sector. 11 years later, she’s a Division I head coach in her hometown after taking over at Dayton in March. Williams-Jeter got her first shot at running a program last year at Division III Wittenberg, where she won a conference title and led the Tigers to their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2015.

That, along with a long resume as an assistant at Ohio State, Kansas, Kentucky and Penn State, made Williams-Jeter a top candidate at Dayton when former head coach Shauna Green left for Illinois. It proved to be an easy choice for the Flyers, who needed just five days to install Williams-Jeter at the helm.