Coach O — both of them get our kudos.
By a hair, we give Beth our coach of the year award.
It’s been a banner year for coaches in our state, but nobody’s been better than VCU’s Beth O’Boyle, whose Rams are the No. 1 seed in this week’s Atlantic 10 Tournament and regular-season champions for the first time in their history, We heard the buzz in the A10 prior to the season, where usual suspects Dayton or GW seemed like the logical frontrunners. Fordham maybe? Almost, but defense juggernaut VCU notched the tiebreaker with a 47-44 Jan. 16 defeat of the league’s other Rams. “Watch out for VCU,” we remember St. Joseph’s Cindy Griffin predicting, and we credit the dean of A10 coaches for her foresight. At 21-8, VCU leads the race for the most improved team in the nation; the Rams finished 7-22 last season and were preseason picks to finish sixth in the A10 in 2018-19. O’Boyle didn’t go out shopping for transfers and jucos. O’Boyle got her players, returners from last year, to buy in to her system. While she credits them, we give her well-deserved recognition. We’ve seen the list of national coaches of the year, the typical hodgepodge of Power 5 folks with All-Americans lining their bench. They’ve got nothing over O’Boyle in our book.
We were tempted to pick co-coaches of the year (an idea we nixed given we’re talking about only 13 Division I teams), so we’ll just say JMU’s Sean O’Regan is in the midst of a pretty special season. JMU was picked to win the league and Kamiah Smalls was the preseason player of the year and will surely pick up the postseason award, too. The Dukes did what they were expected to do, but let’s not forget they lost a starter with the dismissal of Kelly Koshuta and weathered an injury to Logan Reynolds. The nonconference results, which included a loss at Hampton, didn’t rattle O’Regan and crew. He didn’t overreact, he readjusted, and the results, one loss in the CAA and a 23-4 record, speak to that. We think this is the year the Dukes get a taste of the NCAA Tournament for the first time under O’Regan, much deserved for this top-40 RPI team.
Three other names that are not just feel-good runners-up in our book but legitimate contenders for best in state are:
Mike McGuire who led Radford to a 21-8 mark; the Highlanders are regular-season Big South champions. Make no mistake. Radford lost plenty from last year — Janayla White and Jayda Worthy to name a pair. McGuire continues to build a program, not a one-year wonder, replicating what Kenny Brooks did in Harrisonburg. The Highlanders have won 13 straight behind Savannah Felgemacher, Sydney Nunley and Lydia Rivers. Nunley’s development is off the charts — she might be the most improved player in the state. We’re banking on Radford to be in the national tournament.
What a remarkable turnaround for Old Dominion under the direction of Nikki McCray. Remember these (Lady) Monarchs won eight games last season and the offseason saw nearly the whole roster either graduate or depart. Last year, McCray’s team knew what to do; she didn’t have the horses. Now she has a young stable and is rebuilding a program that hasn’t earned an NCAA Tournament bid since 2008. This year’s team is an affirmation of a coach on the rise. They’re disciplined with a defined identity and on pace to receive, at worst, a WNIT bid.
David Six has had Hampton teams with better records than 15-12. But the man had a stroke in June. Coaching was not supposed to be in the cards this soon for Six, who had to relearn to walk and speak. He will receive the Pat Summit Courage Award from the U.S. Basketball Writers at the Final Four. It’s a fitting honor for a coach who never fails to impress us.