The hiring of Shawn Poppie as women’s basketball coach at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga was announced Wednesday, with the former Virginia Tech assistant replacing Katie Burrows, who wasn’t retained after a 46-68 record in four seasons leading her alma mater, including a program-worst 7-23 mark in her final season.
Poppie has already met with UTC players and started working on the things necessary to get the Mocs back toward the top of the Southern Conference standings, where they’ve lived historically.
Here are three things Poppie can do to experience immediate success on and off the court in his first season heading up a program that leads the SoCon with 18 league tournament titles over the decades, with the most recent such championship secured in 2017.
Recruit the team, recruit the portal
The NCAA transfer portal is just part of recruiting now, right?
Poppie’s previous program, Virginia Tech, had success in that regard with five transfers making their way to Blacksburg in recent years. But it’s not simply about getting transfers; it’s about finding the ones who best fit the program.
The Mocs have lost more quality players in the portal than they’ve gained, although freshman Karsen Murphy was a nice addition this past season. Dena Jarrells, who made 28 starts for UTC this past season, has put her name in the portal, although she could always come back. To build a foundation, it probably wouldn’t hurt Poppie to try to make that happen, because it would give the Mocs a guard entering her fourth college season with appearances in more than 70 games.
Jarrells could then lure 6-foot-5 forward Emily Saunders to UTC – the two played together in AAU competition before Saunders spent the past three seasons at Tennessee. Saunders could provide an additional interior piece for a team that had just one true post player (All-SoCon forward Abbey Cornelius) this past season.
But there is a solid, albeit young, nucleus returning for the Mocs (and Upperman’s Brooklyn Crouch, who just won Class AA Miss Basketball in Tennessee, is on her way to Chattanooga) and with a couple additional players at the right spots, success could come sooner than people might expect.
Staff photo by Matt Hamilton / UTC’s Dena Jarrells dribbles as North Alabama’s Hina Suzuki is caught in a pick on Dec. 18 at McKenzie Arena.Build morale
Nobody wants to be attached to the phrase “worst team in program history” but that’s basically where the returning players find themselves entering next season. There were a ton of circumstances surrounding the season – roster defections, injuries, COVID-19, youth – but seven wins was seven wins.
While building the roster, it probably wouldn’t hurt to keep someone on from the previous staff, such as assistant Jon Goldberg, who can bridge the gap between head coach and players. Once the players buy in, it should be beneficial for what Poppie is trying to build.
Staff photo / Vincent Aligo, 2, high-fives UTC mascot Scrappy during the basketball programs’ tipoff event on Oct. 30, 2018, at McKenzie Arena.Get out in the community
It appeared apathy had started to sneak into the community as the season wore on. Attendance has never been an issue for the women’s games, and UTC did average just more than 1,000 per game, but the environment at McKenzie Arena lacked some of the pizzazz that used to accompany a program full of tradition.
Perhaps the only way to cure that is by winning again, but because Poppie’s first UTC team won’t play until November, it would be good for him to shake as many hands and kiss as many babies as possible between now and then, because a new era of Mocs basketball is on the horizon.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.