Joanna Bernabei-McNamee out as Boston College women’s basketball coach
· Yahoo Sports
After eight seasons, Joanna Bernabei-McNamee is out as the head coach of Boston College’s women’s basketball team.
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Following a season-ending 90-65 loss at Syracuse on Sunday, Boston College announced she will not receive a contract extension, bringing her tenure in Chestnut Hill to an end. The Eagles say they will immediately begin a national search for her successor.
"It is simply time for a change and we wish Joanna and her family the very best in the future,” Boston College athletic director Blake James said in a statement. “We take great pride in the variety of sports we sponsor, including our women's teams, and we have a lot already in place to attract a strong candidate pool.”
Bernabei-McNamee had her worst season yet as the Eagles coach this year, going 5-25 overall and 1-17 in ACC play. That’s the least number of wins Boston College has had in a single season since joining the ACC in 2005.
The 50-year-old native of West Virginia was hired in 2018 to lead the Eagles after Erik Johnson’s resignation. Bernabei-McNamee was never able to lead Boston College to the NCAA Tournament.
After going 11-7 in ACC play in 2019-20, her second season, Bernabei-McNamee’s Eagles likely would have been included in the March Madness field, but the tournament was canceled due to COVID-19. Two years later, Boston College went 21-12 overall and 10-8 in the ACC, but was left on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble as the first team excluded from the field.
That was the final winning season for Bernabei-McNamee at Boston College. Some thought she might try to parlay her success in the 2021-22 season into becoming the head coach at West Virginia — the flagship school in her home state where she had been an assistant — following Mike Carey’s retirement, but she remained at BC.
What proved to be difficult for Bernabei-McNamee at Boston College was her ability to retain talented players in the transfer portal era. Many of the top players she recruited and developed went on to help other ACC programs. Taylor Soule was a starter on the Virginia Tech team that went to the Final Four in 2023, Maria Gakdeng was a starter for two seasons at North Carolina, Taina Mair has been a fixture in Duke’s backcourt for the past three seasons.
The next coach of Boston College will have similar hurdles, as multiple sources described the job to USA Today Sports as one of the worst resourced in the ACC.
James will be hiring a women’s basketball coach for the first time since 2007, when he hired Cindy Blodgett at Maine. Already in place when he arrived at Miami, Katie Meier was the head coach of the Hurricanes for Blake’s entire 11-year tenure there.
Before landing at Boston College — and before the landscape of college athletics changed with the introductions of the transfer portal, NIL and revenue sharing — Bernabei-McNamee was a winner. She was on Brenda Frese’s staff at Maryland when the Terps captured the national championship in 2006, coached Pikesville to the NAIA Final Four in 2016 and won 45 games in two seasons at Albany.
Here’s a few names that BC’s leadership might consider.
Missy Traversi
Army went 25-8 last season under Traversi’s watch — its best record in a decade — and the Black Knights finished second in the Patriot League and won a game in the WNIT. Traversi resigned to be closer to her family in Massachusetts, but sources told USA Today Sports she’s ready to get back into coaching if the right opportunity surfaced in the New England area. Traversi won big at her previous stop too, Division II Adelphi, with two conference championships. This season, the Army team made up of mostly players Traversi recruited is 22-6. Traversi grew up in Attleboro, less than 40 miles south of Boston College’s campus.
Ty Grace, Howard head coach
Grace has been the head coach at Howard for 11 seasons, winning two conference titles and guiding the Bison to an NCAA Tournament appearance in 2022. Grace has Howard on pace to go dancing again this March, as they’re 21-7 overall and at the top of the conference standings in the MEAC. A New York native, Grace has roots in the northeast. Before coming to Howard, she was the head coach at her alma mater, New Haven, where she went 44-16 in two seasons and made the Elite Eight of the Division II NCAA Tournament. Grace was also an assistant at Seton Hall, Army and Fairleigh Dickinson.
Alisa Kresge, Vermont head coach
The Catamounts are 24-7 overall and 13-3 in America East play, eyeing what would be their third NCAA Tournament appearance in the past four seasons under Kresge. A native of New Jersey and graduate of Marist — where she’s the program’s all-time leader in assists — Kresge got the Vermont job in 2018. This will be the fifth straight season the Catamounts have won at least 20 games, the longest streak in program history. Kresge, 40, quickly turned Vermont into the best team in the America East and is seen as a rising star. Boston College could do worse than giving her a chance to build them into a winner in the ACC.
Other names to watch: FDU head coach Stephanie Gaitley, Johns Hopkins head coach Rodney Rogan, St. John’s assistant Steve Pogue, Connecticut Sun assistant Roneeka Hodges, LIU head coach Neil Harrow, Quinnipiac head coach Tricia Fabbri, FIU head coach Jesyka Burks-Wiley
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Boston College fires women’s basketball coach, who could might replace her?