In 2018, Minnesota athletic director Mark Coyle took a bit of a gamble on Lindsay Whalen. The Gophers legend brought the women’s basketball team to relevance as a player in the early 2000s by delivering the program’s first and only Final Four appearance. She was still playing in the WNBA, where she had already won four league titles with the Minnesota Lynx, when Coyle hired her to lead her alma mater.
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In the state, she was beloved. But as a head coach, she was untested. She had been a “coach on the floor” for Minnesota, in the WNBA and for Team USA, but she had never been a coach on the sideline, actually leading a team and program.
Thursday, after five seasons and no NCAA Tournament appearances, the university announced that Whalen will step down as head coach but remain employed by the school through the 2025 academic year as a “special assistant to the athletics director.”
Whalen’s open seat is the second in power conferences for the 2023 coaching carousel (earlier this week TCU announced that Raegan Pebley will step down at the end of the season), and Minnesota could be a sneaky-good job for the right candidate.
Over the past few weeks, reporters at The Athletic have been chatting with power conference head coaches for an upcoming anonymous poll. One of the questions: What school is a sleeping giant? A few coaches already picked Minnesota, with one saying, “If they get the right coach, that’s a monster.”
There are a few reasons to believe that might be true. Coyle wouldn’t have made the move without knowing the kind of money the Gophers will need to ante up to bring the right coach to Minneapolis. Illinois signed Shauna Green to a six-year contract last year with a base salary of $800,000. And Green delivered results immediately. The Illini recorded their first 20-win season since 2007-08. By comparison, Whalen made $547,000 this season and was set to make less than $600,000 next year.
The next Minnesota staff won’t need to go far to find talent to win in the Big Ten. Though there weren’t enough wins on the court, Whalen had some recruiting victories in recent years, including signing three top-60 players in the 2022 class. So, without too much attrition to the transfer portal, there is talent in the cupboard at Minnesota. But beyond those already on the roster, the state of Minnesota regularly produces top talent.
A Minnesota icon forever and always.
Thank you, Lindsay. pic.twitter.com/D8he2heEqa
— Minnesota Gophers (@GopherSports) March 2, 2023
Since Paige Bueckers was the No. 1 player in the 2020 class, Minnesota has produced 12 players ranked in the top 100 (only the three from the 2022 class signed with the Gophers, though). And looking forward, there are three top-15 players between the 2024 and 2025 classes: No. 7 Olivia Olson (committed to Michigan, 2024), No. 14 Alivia McGill (uncommitted) and No. 13 Aaliyah Crump (2025).
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Beyond the money and in-state talent, the Big Ten is about to become the only bicoastal conference in the nation when UCLA and USC join the conference in 2024, giving coaches an opportunity to establish an in-conference recruiting footprint on the West Coast and putting the conference in the three biggest media markets in the U.S.
Coyle wouldn’t have made this move without a plan in mind — you don’t get rid of the most famous basketball player in the state without believing that whoever comes next will be an obvious and immediate improvement.
So, let’s take a look at who might check the right boxes for Minnesota and who Coyle should try to reel in as the Gophers’ next head coach.
Megan Duffy, Marquette head coach
Duffy has already notched her third 20-win season in four years at Marquette and has the best winning percentage of any coach in program history. In an increasingly competitive Big East, Duffy has continued to deliver big wins, upsetting Texas and beating UConn in conference play this season. The Ohio native played at Notre Dame, but she already has Big Ten experience as a Michigan assistant under Kim Barnes Arico from 2014 to 2017. Her last three coaching jobs (Marquette, Miami of Ohio and Michigan) have all been in the Midwest, meaning she already has relationships with AAU and high school coaches across the region. With Duffy stacking 20-win seasons, her name will come up a lot in these conversations, and Green’s salary is going to be the comparison point for any Big Ten hire this offseason. (Minnesota would need to plan for an even bigger investment, too, considering Duffy re-upped with Marquette through the 2026-27 season in 2021.)
Dawn Plitzuweit, West Virginia head coach
Minnesota would need to offer a lot of money to bring Plitzuweit, a Wisconsin native, back to the Midwest, considering she signed a six-year deal with West Virginia before last season. But everyone in the state of Minnesota (and across the women’s college hoops landscape) is well aware of Plitzuweit’s success leading South Dakota from 2016 to 2022. In her third season with the Coyotes (2017-18), Plitzuweit led them to the NCAA Tournament, with Minnesota native Hannah Sjerven leading the way. They followed that up with two more tournament appearances in 2021 and 2022, reaching the Sweet 16 last year. (They would have been in the tournament during the 2020 COVID-19 postseason as well.) She has proved she can recruit and develop talent, and though the Gophers would need to spend to pull her away from West Virginia, she would be a great fit.
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Lindy La Rocque, UNLV head coach
The 33-year-old would be an outside-the-box hire considering she has no obvious Big Ten or Midwest ties, but in her fourth year at UNLV, La Rocque already has proved her chops as a coach who can turn around a program. After going 15-9 in her first year, she has reeled off three consecutive 25-win seasons, and last year she got the Lady Rebels back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in two decades. Many assume the Stanford grad, who went to four Final Fours with the Cardinal, is waiting for a Pac-12 job to open. But with conference realignment making the future uncertain, those allegiances might not mean as much anymore. La Rocque is making $150,000 in base salary this season, but that doesn’t mean Minnesota could skimp on an offer to her, considering many anticipate she’ll be one of the most highly sought-after coaches in the country.
(Photo of Megan Duffy: Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)
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