After What Seems an Eternal Wait, Jody Wynn is Named the New Women’s Basketball Coach

What seemed like a millennium, was actually only a couple weeks. And there was a lot of Athletic Director duties going on, such as extending our beloved football coach. But those of us die hard Women’s Hoops fans were impatient, we needed to know! I know who I wanted, as I’m sure everyone else did. I had my favorite and when I heard Jody Wynn’s name in the mix of those being looked at I was not super excited, but I understood why she was in the mix.

When you look at Coach Wynn’s resume’ it is very easy to be excited. She started her collegiate basketball career as a, Trojan (I won’t hold that against her, we can’t all be perfect). She was a letter winner with USC from 1993-96, and yes she played with Lisa Leslie. She has an impressive coaching resume’ as well, starting first at Pepperdine, moving back to be an assistant at USC, and then taking on a struggling Long Beach State program as the head coach.

Looking at her experience on a whole, it really is impressive. She has been to the NCAA tournament many times, three times as a player, three times with Pepperdine, and twice with USC. The biggest accomplishment at USC being the 2006 class that she assisted in recruiting. They came in as the No. 1 ranked group. Her 8 year head coaching stint at Long Beach State ended with an NCAA appearance, the first since 1992, and a once floundering program recorded 3 consecutive years of 20+ wins.

Coach Wynn’s 49er’s almost pulled off the upset of the decade when they came within 2 points of upsetting No. 2 seed Oregon State University, 56-55.

Coach Wynn will not be coming alone, the assumption is that she will hire her assistant coach, and Husband, Derek Wynn.

Standing from a distance one could really like this hire: 1) Jody Wynn has been quite successful in her now 21 years of coaching, she obviously knows her X’s and O’s, which will be a huge improvement over our favorite motivator (cough). 2) Coach Wynn is a west coast person, which would indicate she is not likely to jump to the SEC or BIG10 when she has success. Of course bear in mind we do need to keep pace with salary. 3) She knows the Pac-12 and the pressures that come with being in a power 5 conference. 4) Although she is an alum of USC, I do not see her jumping ship to rejoin that party. After all USC is a football school and everything else is, well, not football.

So why am I not jumping for joy, or doing cartwheels? Other than obvious, that I’m not in shape for such a thing, my concern is her ability to recruit in Washington.

All Dawg fans want a fence around the State. These are our players, our children and they represent to the rest of the United States that Washington is relevant in sports. All sports! I’ll admit it, I’m a homer all around, especially when it comes to defending this soggy piece of terra firma. Whether or not Coach Wynn can attract our best and brightest athletes, that is my biggest concern. Her predecessor sure couldn’t, and that was a real problem for me.

As we say goodbye to most prolific duo in this program’s history. It is time to embrace the new. It will be so very hard because what the University of Washington had in Kelsey Plum and Chantel Osahor may never be repeated again.

Time to put on our big kid pants and move forward, and so I welcome our new Coach and her family to the Pacific Northwest. Go Dawgs!

*Coach Wynn will be formally introduced on Monday April 17th at 3pm.