The Pac has "recently" had four African American female head coaches. Nikki Caldwell (Fargas) at UCLA, Cynthia Cooper Dyke at USC, Tia Jackson at UW and LaVonda Wagner at OSU. Caldwell-Fargas was a hit in her three years but Jackson and Wagner were so bad that they seriously damaged their programs. Wagner left the program in such terrible shape that Rueck had to have open tryouts on campus for players. Jackson began trying to disallow transfers because so many players wanted to leave. Cooper Dyke was so disliked by her players that it became a revolving door of transfers. The concept that they were held to higher standard is ridiculous. It would have been interesting to see how Caldwell Fargas might have developed at UCLA without a top class of players but we saw some of the subsequent results at LSU.
For many reasons, I think ADs would like to have African American female coaches for their basketball programs but when things don't work out, what do you do? The next crop of associate/assistant coaches like Niele Ivey and Johnnie Harris will certainly get their chances sooner or later but Tia Jackson was considered one of the top assistant coaches in the nation before her spectacular flop in Seattle.
Coquese Washington started with a bang but has left Penn St in a perpetual state of rebuilding. And of course, let's not forget the worst head coach in recent memory, Sheryl Swoopes at Loyola.
