Five Out: New Coaches in the WNBA, an NCAA season beginning and wisdom from T-Pain

Two WNBA franchises now have their head coaches, we officially begin the college basketball season and how a Red Rocks concert made me think about a broader discussion in women's hoops...

Courtesy: Sarah Gordon // The Day

Hope everyone enjoyed the break because in just a couple hours there will be live women’s basketball back on our television screens. The NCAA season is officially underway and Aflac Oui-Play in Paris is guaranteeing us a couple of fun matchups to open the year up. No. 20 Ole Miss takes on No. 3 USC at noon ET while No. 5 UCLA and No. 17 Louisville face off immediately after.

You can expect the column to start to tilt a little more towards college hoops now that we’re in season. But don’t worry, there will still be plenty of WNBA discussion here as well. We are No Cap Space *WBB*, after all.

A couple housekeeping notes before we get into the week that was…

If you missed any of our college preview content, please click HERE. It’s a link to our NCAA mega guide which includes previews for every conference, individual looks at the top four teams (and special podcasts with star players) and all of the other NCAA related content we’ve done this offseason. As for this week on No Cap Space WBB here’s what you can expect…

Monday: Rashard’s Power Rankings are already out. His Top 25 will be a fixture at NCS throughout the season.

Tuesday: We talked to Georgetown head coach Darnell Haney about managing grief, joy and the new look Hoyas program in the wake of Tasha Butts’ passing last year.

Wednesday: A new Legendarium installment drops. This one highlights Lucille Kyvallos, the Godmother of New York women’s basketball, and the trailblazers of Queens College.

Thursday: We’ll have some preview content ahead of the Ally Tip-Off in Charlotte. Tyler and Chauny will be our NCS boots on the ground covering the event in person.

Friday: The first of our ‘Weekly Watch Guides’ comes out. We know there’s a lot of games each week so we try and find you the best, most important or most interesting ones.

And now…to the column!

Stephane White is coming home to Indiana. Does that really mean the Fever are now a contender?

The absolute worst kept secret in the WNBA finally came to light this week as Stephanie White left the Connecticut Sun and is now joining Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever. What’s been extremely amusing is the new litigation of how good of a coach White really is. For starters, I think she’s very good. Not Cheryl Reeve or Becky Hammon but definitely someone that can grow into that. It also helps when you have a generational player to help burnish your resume. Just ask Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs. The ‘guy who can never win a Super Bowl when he gets there’ is now one of the greatest coaches of all-time by virtue of Patrick Mahomes falling into his lap. That’s not to say Reid isn’t great. But it’s to draw a parallel to how great coaches and great players work in tandem to make generational runs. Very rarely is it either-or. Even in this league we see it. Who is more responsible for the Aces success? Would Becky Hammon be doing what she’s doing without A’ja Wilson or vice versa?

Sure, you can point to the Sun not advancing to the WNBA Finals and say that’s evidence of White as a good but not great coach. But that argument starts based on a premise that an Alyssa Thomas led team can win you a title, which is a dicey place to start from. Realistically speaking, a lot of players improved under White’s tenure. DiJonai Carrington and Ty Harris had breakout campaigns, Marina Mabrey found her post-trade footing almost immediately and as a team their defense was one of the best in the league. That’s what you’re getting with White that you aren’t in Sides. You know she is an immediate floor raiser with a high ceiling. Did Sides deserve more time? Maybe, if Clark looks more like a player that isn’t built to win immediately. But the back half of the year proved that the window is open from year one and you have to move accordingly as an organization. For people to question if White is capable of raising that team into a better defensive unit or guiding them to a more consistent level of play, I’d say just watch the Sun this past year.

The Sky’s hire of Tyler Marsh is a move for the future…

If White was a ‘win now’ move for the Fever, the Sky’s hiring of Tyler Marsh is a good gamble of growing as a unit. The core in Chicago is already set with Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso. It’s likely that they’ll draft a point guard of the future with their 2025 pick (Olivia Miles, bookmark it now folks). What they’ll need is a coach that will be expected to grow and develop those players as opposed to trying to find the existing pieces and win now. For those curious about why Curt Miller was let go in Los Angeles, that’s a part of the reason. You can’t be someone coaching a new wave and rely heavily on veteran players at the expense of those you need to develop.

Marsh has more than a couple success stories, specifically Jackie Young, to point to as evidence that he knows how to take players from one stage of their career and into the next. He’s the son of a coach — his father Donnie led two HBCU programs in his time — and has extensive NBA and G-League experience. He’s tweeted during Sky games this year discussing Reese’s game and clearly seems to have an idea of how to help her expand and develop her offensive game. If he manages to do that while managing the rotations and minutes of her and Cardoso properly, the Sky have a tandem that can compete at the highest level for years to come. It’s exactly the kind of hire you want to make with two players that are a little bit in the developmental phase. Reese is already a complete defensive player but the required work on the other side of the ball is well documented. Cardoso has immense talent on both ends but it just needs to be better nurtured and unlocked. My only curiosity is how he manages the attention. Becky Hammon was such a dominant force of personality that Marsh and Nakase got to be more even-keeled. But with Reese, it’s clear that coaches with big personalities resonate with her. Will we see Marsh as a new person now that it’s his team? That’s the only unknown I’m fascinated with. But from an X’s and O’s standpoint, the Sky made the right move.

What do those coaching hires mean for the rest of the carousel?

I’d argue that the top three coaches on the board — White, Marsh and Natalie Nakase — are officially off. That leaves a lot of semi-interesting coaching hires and potentially some unknown candidates on the horizon. The issue I see now is that there are plenty of remaining faces — Latricia Trammell, Curt Miller and others — who have pluses and notable deficiencies. The funniest subplot was someone this week finding Christie Sides Instagram follows and seeing a bunch of Atlanta Dream players, causing speculation that she might be someone headed there (she was a former assistant in Atlanta).

I can’t say that I know who will be in the mix for the remaining open coaching jobs but there are fits that I could see working. Curt Miller and the Atlanta Dream feels good philosophically. He’s always prioritized veteran players and the Dream are a win-now roster laden with players that have been in the league a long time. Christie Sides could be an option in Dallas or Washington, where there is a clear need for some new blood. It’s a market and team that would allow her to continue to learn how to succeed as a head coach, build and develop some new faces. The Mystics, in particular, are giving indications that they’re gonna blow it up so she might be the type of long term turnaround coach. Latricia Trammell actually would be a fun fit in Los Angeles especially if they end up winning the Paige Bueckers sweepstakes. Her offensive system is fun, they’ve got a budding scoring superstar in Rickea Jackson while Cam Brink can help alleviate some of the defensive shortcomings. A drip-chain in L.A. would also be hilarious too. The only person I can’t place is Teresa Weatherspoon and it’s mostly because I’m unsure if she can overcome some of the alleged locker room chemistry issues and disagreements with management that circulated after her firing. To be clear, I think she has a spot in this league to still be a head coach. But the fit feels like it has to be specific so we’ll see how that all shakes out. One thing is for sure: these owners see a major windfall on the horizon via new players and TV money. So the need to win is now and don’t be shocked if some more head scratching Nate Tibbetts type hires happen as organizations scramble to find the next Becky Hammon.

The three stories to pay attention to in college basketball this week…

The first couple weeks of the non-conference are usually good times to find out what you have in a team. Top squads usually empty their benches and we get to see some glimpses of players that may be really important pieces come March. But there’s a couple interesting under the radar stories that I’m looking at that will help give me a better idea of what the overall landscape of the sport will be this year.

• Oregon absolutely loaded up in the transfer portal for the first time in the Kelly Graves era. Historically, he’s loathed using it to wholesale turn over a team. But a consistent slide and exodus of talent forced his hand. The NIL machine in Eugene ratcheted up and their roster is legitimately fun and interesting. It’s a movie we’ve seen before, to be sure. Which is why that opener against Cal Baptist tonight is going to be a key game. Jarrod Olson is 133-54 since bringing the Lancers up to Division I. How well Oregon handles CBU (if they win at all) will tell me a lot about how this year might go in Eugene. KG has deservedly earned a lot of goodwill with AD Rob Mullens for building the Ducks into a nationally recognized program but it feels like the clock is ticking. This first week feels huge towards allaying those fears.

• Jackson State vs. Clemson is also fascinating for a pair of reasons. It’s two new coaches — Margaret Richards at JSU and Shawn Poppie at CU — who are coming into two different situations. Richards takes over for Tomekia Reed, who parlayed an immensely successful tenure into the Charlotte job. Poppie takes his first high-major gig after being Kenny Brooks’ top lieutenant at Virginia Tech before a successful stint at Chattanooga. There’s a couple teams in the SWAC that probably see blood in the water with Reed gone. But JSU has shown that they can compete with top end teams all over the country. If they manage to beat Clemson, it might be a win that ages very well. I’m a believer in Poppie and am curious to see how his team looks right out of the gate. At the same time, JSU could burnish an NCAA Tournament case with an early win. It all matters come March.

• What does a Caitlin Clark-less Iowa look like? It’s kind of hard to imagine given her ubiquity in college basketball over the last four years. While I don’t expect the Hawkeyes to magically lose their talent completely I am curious how you manage to rebuild the team into something a bit more complete. As dominant as Clark is and was, she was very clearly the focal point of everything the Hawkeyes have done for the last few years. So what happens now? What has Hannah Stuelke worked on this offseason? Will Sydney Affolter be the lead guard and how will Lucy Olsen integrate into Jan Jensen’s system? They’ll probably crush NIU but I’m tuned in to see how they look. The Hawkeyes are unranked and largely forgotten within preseason hype. Does that mean we’re underrating them already?

A T-Pain Red Rocks show left me with a lesson that can be applied to the world of women’s hoops.

So my wife and I went to see T-Pain at Red Rocks outside Denver on Halloween with some friends. Let me tell you this first: that man can sing. It was a good combination of songs that early 30’s Millenials grew up on but also some of his successful covers like ‘Tennessee Whiskey’. But throughout the course of the night you could see how much the show meant to him individually. In more than one instance, T-Pain and his DJ stopped to just bask in the moment. For a guy who was, at one point, credited with destroying popular music via autotune it was a triumphant moment. Two sold out shows at Red Rocks. Before the show ended, the crowd clapped, cheered and chanted his name. The emotion on his face that Thursday night was clear and he said something that really stuck with me.

“It’s never too late to feel adoration or people’s appreciation.”

I wrote that line down in my phone and kept it because it hits on so many subjects and is so relatable to life and the work that we do here at No Cap Space. On my way home, I thought about a conversation I had had with Queens College legend Gail Marquis about a week earlier. It was for the Legendarium installment that you’ll read on Wednesday and how that era of AIAW basketball goes largely ignored by most women’s basketball fans. Gail talked about how some of those years after Queens embittered her as the world seemed to wrap its arms around others instead of her and her teammates. It’s a conversation we’ve had all year long in the WNBA about frustration around fandom arriving now and not before. But T-Pain’s words hit me hard in the sense that it’s never too late for those players to receive that adoration and it’s never too late for us to do it. I’ve seen plenty of anecdotal stories of new fans finding a different player in the league now, or a retired player that we honor and gravitating towards them or their style of play. While it might be too late for some to benefit monetarily or become famous the way they should have, it’s never too late to read their stories, to bring them on your shows, to write about them or mention them on broadcasts. It’s never too late to tweet or make reddit threads or posts on Facebook. Because they feel it and they see it, even years later. Take the lesson from T-Pain, who told a raucous Colorado crowd he couldn’t even get booked at venues for a time and is now doing sold out shows at one of the most iconic American music venues, and take it with you in basketball and elsewhere. It’s never too late.