BOISE, Idaho — Before last season, the Big Sky Conference saw an influx of new women’s basketball coaches like never before.
Five of the league’s 10 basketball programs hired new head coaches. Each of the rookie head coaches had varying results in their first seasons.
In the second year under that group, all five programs have shown varying levels of improvement. And three of the teams — Big Sky co-champion Sacramento State, red-hot Eastern Washington and uber-talented Montana — each earned byes, making them contenders in this week’s Big Sky Tournament at Idaho Central Arena in the heart of the Gem State’s capital city.
Mark Campbell helped lead Sac State to a share of the first Big Sky title in the school’s history. Joddie Gleason has Eastern Washington as a No. 4 seed with a first round bye with a matchup against Brian Holsinger’s Lady Griz looming on Monday. Chelsea Gregg, her staff and players endured a winless Big Sky slate last season only to bounce back to win eight league games this year. And Kristin Mattio endured a mass exodus following knocking off top-seeded and reigning league champion Idaho State at last year’s tournament yet the Bears have been spunky all season long.
“All five of them are good coaches,” said Idaho State head coach Seton Sobolewski, who leads his team into the 15th Big Sky Tournament under his direction. “They’re doing a great job in their situations. I look at them like, Man, I gotta step my game up…We’ve got to stay sharp to try to compete with them.”
Campbell took over a Sac State program that had early success a decade ago under former head coach Bunky Harkleroad. The former D-III colloquial wizard ran a completely unorthodox, wild system that set a goal to shoot 100 shots and 50 3-pointers every single time the Hornets hit the hardwood.
Harkleroad finished second in the conference in his second year at the helm and won 18 games in each of his first two seasons between 2013 and 2015. But when former coach Jamie Craighead’s recruits ran out — particularly the graduation of phenomenal point guard Fantasia Hilliard — the wins began slipping.
Sac State won just 49 games over the last six years of Harkleroad’s eight-year tenure, hitting rock bottom in a 3-21 season during the pandemic-impacted campaign that came to an end in 2021.
Enter Campbell, a well-respected assistant who was integral in helping turn Oregon State (2010-2014) and Oregon (2014-2021) into perennial Final Four contenders. He is lauded for landing some of the prime recruits in Oregon & Pac 12 history, including Sabrina Ionescu, who was the No. 1 overall selection in the 2020 WNBA Draft by the New York Liberty.
Last season, Campbell helped Lianna Tillman earn Big Sky Player of the Year honors, an award that fell a bit flat when the seventh-seeded Hornets lost to 10th-seeded Weber State in their first Big Sky Tournament game.
But Campbell, himself a college point guard who helped lead Hawaii to 27 wins and the 2003 NCAA Tournament as a player, reloaded with one of the best point guards in a point guard league.
Kahlaijah Dean transferred to Sac State after an All-Horizon League career at Oakland. She took the league by storm like few players before her ever have. The 5-foot-6 dynamo averaged 21.7 points and 5.2 assists per game, maximizing her abilities in Campbell’s high-usage offense on the way to earning Big Sky MVP and the league’s Newcomer of the Year honors.
“Experience at point guard takes you a long way. Mark has found a way to recruit experience two years in a row,” quipped Idaho veteran coach Jon Newlee, who is in his 15th season leading the Vandals.
Dean, paired with imposing 6-foot-5 center Isnelle Natabou (All-Big Sky for the second year in a row this season) were the centerpieces to Sac ripping off 13 Big Sky wins and sharing the Big Sky title for the first time since joining the conference in 1996.
“We all knew it would be tough, me, Coach Campbell, but we all worked hard from the day we got here and this is our trophy and we are very blessed to have this championship,” Dean said following her team’s senior night victory over Portland State to sew up the share of the title. “To be able to win my last home game and win a trophy, it’s a miracle and I love it.
Dean basically reached out and grabbed the MVP all for herself with a transcendent 35-point, 8-assist effort in Sac’s 82-73 win over Montana State last Thursday that denied the Bobcats the outright championship.
“We were a new staff and those kids fought like heck for us to spring board off of,” Campbell said after cutting down the nets. “This has been a two-year journey and this is the pinnacle. Our mantra all season has been playing our best basketball heading into March and we are doing it right now.”
Eastern Washington’s head coaching vacancy shocked many around the Big Sky. Wendy Schuller spent 19 seasons at EWU, advancing to the postseason semifinals seven times, playing in two BSC tourney championship games and qualifying for the WNIT in 2010, 2013 and 2015. She won a total of 277 games while leading Eastern and was the longest-tenured coach in the league before her abrupt dismissal.
She had three straight losing seasons before being let go, although EWU played in the tournament championship game in 2019 despite its 13-20 record.
Eastern Washington athletic director Lynn Hickey, who was an All-American basketball player at Kansas State before playing for Team USA and then serving as the head coach at Texas A&M from 1984-1994, hired Gleason to replace Schuller.
Gleason, who won 107 games at Butte Community College and then 201 more games as the head coach at Humboldt State before spending five seasons as an assistant at Seattle U.
Part of Schuller’s end mirrored a trend that impacted EWU’s men’s team as well. The athletic department as a whole, particular in hoops, saw an exodus of players following the COVID year. Gleason’s first season featured arguably the youngest roster in the league, which resulted in just nine total wins.
In Gleason’s second season, the Eagles have been a revelation.
“All these second-year head coaches having their teams competitive, it’s so good for the league,” said Northern Arizona head coach Loree Payne, who’s Lumberjacks shared the league title with Sac and Montana State and who personally shared league Coach of the Year honors with Campbell and MSU’s Tricia Binford.
“Eastern Washington is by far the most improved team in our league. They have some of the best players in the conference right now. They are playing well and they are a really solid, deep team and that’s what catapults teams into championship mode.”
EWU surges into Boise by winning four in a row, including a statement 78-65 win at Montana State to ensure a split title and secure the No. 4 seed for the Eagles. In Gleason’s second season, EWU won 11 league games and has 18 wins overall.
“This team continues to show competitive greatness at the times when we need it most,” Gleason said in a press release following the MSU win. “Montana State is such a good team; they are well coached and prepared. They did not make anything easy for us.
“This team is so fun to coach and were are excited to head to the Big Sky Championships next week.”
Holsinger had perhaps the most daunting task of last year’s new coaches when he took over the once-dominant and still relevant Lady Griz. Robin Selvig trail-blazed his way to national prominence and national relevance during 38 seasons leading his alma mater, an impossible to replicate run that included 865 wins and 21 trips to the NCAA Tournament.
When Selvig retired after nearly four decades leading UM, Shannon (Cate) Schweyen took over. Widely regarded as the greatest player in Montana and Big Sky Conference history during her playing days in the early 1990s, Schweyen had been one of Selvig’s assistants for more than two decades before taking over as Lady Griz head coach.
She faltered during her five seasons, posting a 52-69 record that included just one Big Sky Tournament victory.
Holsinger, who like Campbell coached for Scott Rueck at Oregon State (2016-2021) also had a Montana Tech connection after spending 2005-2007 as the head women’s basketball coach at Montana Tech in Butte.
Schweyen went 17-13 in her last full season, then 12-11 before getting dismissed. Holsinger posted a 19-11 record last year and has UM at 14-15 this season, including 10-8 in league play to enter the tournament as the No. 5 seed. UM plays Eastern Washington at noon on Monday.
“The Lady Griz are definitely one of the most talented teams in the league and that’s what makes them scary, any time,” said Binford, Montana State’s 18th-year head coach who just captured her fourth Big Sky Coach of the Year after leading MSU to a share of its fifth Big Sky title since 2016.
Although she did not guide her team to a bye, Gregg might have orchestrated the biggest turnaround of any of the coaches in the league, second-year or otherwise.
Last season, Gregg estimated that Portland State had the ability to have full practices less than a dozen times throughout the year because of local and state-wide pandemic regulations in Oregon. After her team’s loss to Idaho at the Big Sky Tournament, Gregg preached admiration for her players and seemed optimistic about the future.
“There’s a gift and a struggle, absolutely,” Gregg said earlier this season when asked about how hard it was to endure a winless conference campaign. “It’s hard to acknowledge when you are going through it and it continues to be hard. But if we don’t learn how to finish games, if we don’t have a passion for getting better, what are we doing? We would’ve loved to have some wins last year and be more competitive but the reality was that we found out a lot about who we are and we built out that resilience muscle.”
This year, Portland State turned a major corner, posting impressive wins against Idaho and at Eastern Washington while also sweeping league co-champion NAU. PSU also earned last-second wins over Weber State (on an Esmeralda Morales buzzer-beater) and in overtime against Montana (74-72) after hitting two 3-pointer in the final two seconds of regulation, including a Century McCartney bank shot at the buzzer, to force overtime.
“Portland State is MUCH improved and leading the conference in forced turnovers,” Binford said. “Their zone is much more aggressive than it was last year.
“I think the league as a whole is really getting better and it’s a credit to every second year coach getting better in their year.”
Mattio had a strange appointment at UNC after Jenny Huth abruptly departed for no reported reason, only to resurface as an assistant at Oregon State.
Mattio, who spent time as an assistant Montana State (2005) and as a head coach at Division II West Texas A&M for six seasons before taking over at UNC, already has a definitive high-water mark in her two years leading the Bears.
Behind 23 points and nine rebounds from Kurstyn Harden, UNC toppled Idaho State 72-54 in the quarterfinals of the Big Sky championship. Idaho State had one of the best teams of the 21st century the season prior, ripping off 22 wins in a covid-shortened season and pushing Kentucky all the way down to the end in the NCAA Tournament. ISU repeated as Big Sky champion in the regular season last season only to hit a wall in Boise.
In the off-season, Harden and a collection of other Bears left the program. Hannah Simental, who was named All-Big Sky earlier this week, was the last star standing.
Still, despite employing nine freshmen on its roster, six in the rotation and three in the starting lineup, Northern Colorado managed to win 12 games. The Bears won at Idaho, took NAU to overtime and beat Idaho State in its season finale to secure its fifth league win.
UNC plays Weber State at noon on Saturday. Portland State plays Idaho State at 2:30 p.m. Saturday.
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
