Baylor name Nicki Collen as their next Lady Bear coach.

[teacherdean]

This may be a very good hire for the Bears. They get a top WNBA coach with college coaching experience. I believe it will help keep their 2021 recruits and stop a multiple exit via the portal. How successful she will be as a college coach, only time will tell. However, Baylor may have hit a home run.

 

[volman128]

This is a pretty unremarkable hire, IMO. What little HC experience she has isn’t in college. She has a long history of coaching in college as an assistant but none of it is particularly impressive.

 

[BowlBrother85]

This is a pretty unremarkable hire, IMO. What little HC experience she has isn’t in college. She has a long history of coaching in college as an assistant but none of it is particularly impressive.

Although there was a quasi-player revolt against the team ownership to blame for it last year, the Atlanta Dream were not very good the last two seasons. I don't see how you can describe Nicki Collen as "a top WNBA coach". That is stretching it a bit. Anyone was going to be a step down from who Baylor just lost, but I thought they would make a better hire than this.

 

[#1LVLS MAN 4 LIFE]

In the wake of Coach Mulkey leaving, this hire, I don't think, will keep Baylor at the tip of women's college basketball. I wish her and the Lady Bears well, but there could be storm clouds ahead, not immediately but probably on the horizon.

 

[Volfan2012]

What she will immediately find is she is in a battle for top 20 recruits with LSU, UConn, SC, Stanford, Texas, just to name a few. That is a hard battle to win and when you start getting the lower part of top 100 recruits the program starts trending downward. This is what will determine her success as a college coach recruiting.

 

[VolBall09]

The Big 12 will under go a big shake up next season. If most of the Baylor players stay I still think they finish 3-4th. There are some good coaches in the Big 12 and they have been beat up by Baylor for a long time.

Collen is going to get the Holly Warlick treatment of every team coming for blood against you because they can finally smell it. Coaches like Kim and Pat are hard to follow because they beat everyone for so long.

I think Texas will make a big improvement under Schaefer’s second year direction. Iowa State is brining back a very tough team. I think they might win that league. Jennie Baranczyk was a good hire for Oklahoma. Believe they will be much tougher within a season or two. Her teams play with a lot of grit which is something that program has been missing for a long time.

 

[teacherdean]

This is a pretty unremarkable hire, IMO. What little HC experience she has isn’t in college. She has a long history of coaching in college as an assistant but none of it is particularly impressive.

Only time will tell if this hire was remarkable or not. As I said in my original post, Baylor may have hit a home run, however, like Vanderbilt, they may have hit a foul ball. In this hire I think what really matters is who she hires as her assistant coaches. If it were me I would have tried to hire a high profile coach who was a proven winner at the D1 level or a high profile D1 assistant who was part of a winning program.

 

[VA_VOLFAN]

i posted this in the NonLV post but seems like it fits here too

 

[Coach Jumper]

Stephanie White had some good players too

 

[VA_VOLFAN]

Stephanie White had some good players too

Not BU type players

 

[Lucy]

Kind of a head scratcher. Might be interesting to see who her rep is and compare to AD’s. Or maybe some connections through previous college stops. This just smells a bit like a couple of football hires we have endured.
I can see this job being a hard sell. Follow a legend, Baptist school, Waco?
Good news is no Darth on here crowing about Baylor getting a coach we should have had!

 

[Border Vol]

Poor hire by Baylor they could have hired someone much better.