Northwestern’s hiring of Joe McKeown to be its next women’s basketball coach this offseason was met with a lot of raised eyebrows from coaches and athletic directors across the country.
Their surprise had nothing to do with doubts about McKeown’s qualifications for the job – he is universally respected in the coaching community and holds the George Washington and Atlantic 10 records for career wins.
But why would McKeown, who has never suffered a losing season as a head coach, choose to leave the Colonials after back-to-back Sweet 16 appearances for a team that has gone 7-59 in Big Ten play during the past four seasons?
After all, he has had numerous other chances to bolt from George Washington. McKeown declined two opportunities to jump to the WNBA, in 1997 to become the first coach of the New York Liberty and two years later to lead the Washington Mystics.
He almost replaced current Ohio State coach Jim Foster at Vanderbilt in 2002 but decided to stay put, and the year before McKeown was a candidate to become the men’s coach for the Colonials when the university hired Karl Hobbs.
But out of all of those possibilities, the position he finally left for was the one at NU.
“The potential of Northwestern and the energy Jim Phillips brings as athletic director intrigued me,” McKeown said. “And obviously being in the Big Ten, a great conference, and the Big Ten Network and getting that type of exposure, and being able to recruit the student-athlete like I had at GW.”
He said timing was also a big part of his decision. He was looking to move his family to an area that had better schools for his son. Plus, considering his age, the 52-year-old coach figured he might not get another chance to switch jobs that was this ideal.
The challenge of rebuilding an NU program that has not finished higher than ninth in the Big Ten since the 1996-1997 season is a daunting one. But coaches around the conference expect the Wildcats to show significant improvement as early as this year.
“He will make an incredibly fast impact at Northwestern,” Wisconsin coach Lisa Stone said. “He’s been successful, he has a way of getting his philosophy across to his players and he’s just a proven winner.”
One of McKeown’s first orders of business has been to implement his system on the court.
He said the team would try to open up the floor on offense and be more fast-paced. Defensively, he is encouraging a more physical style of play and said the players need to improve their rebounding. The Cats should bring more full-court pressure than in years past as well.
According to senior guard Erin Dickerson, McKeown’s philosophy is completely different from that of his predecessor, Beth Combs.
“Pretty much he’s changed everything,” Dickerson said. “He wants us to attack. Last year it was more, ‘Let’s get back in a zone, let’s slow it down.’ He wants to pick the tempo up.”
The team atmosphere is also completely different from last winter.
McKeown said the most important thing was for the players to put last season behind them and start fresh. Dickerson and sophomore center Amy Jaeschke both sense a more relaxed and exciting environment.
“He’s a really funny guy,” Jaeschke said of her new coach. “Our practices are really serious, but sometimes he’ll crack jokes just to loosen everyone up. That’s something kind of different – we’re allowed to have fun. There’s a lot more optimism.”
There are many challenges that a first-year coach faces in any league, and despite his experience, McKeown is no exception.
As with any new hire, he inherits a group of players he did not recruit and who might not fit his style. It takes time for them to learn new schemes and for the coach to get a feel for his players’ strengths and weaknesses.
Another issue is the competitiveness of the Big Ten. Although McKeown’s teams at George Washington were among the best in the country, the team did not play in as tough a conference as NU will.
“I think in a lower conference, you’ve already got easy wins on your schedule,” Minnesota coach Pam Borton said. “Especially with the level he had his program at George Washington, you can look at the schedule and say, ‘OK, tonight’s going to be an easy game.’ But it’s a battle and it’s a fight every night in the Big Ten.”
Changing the culture of losing at NU also will be a difficult task. It has been 10 years since the Cats last managed to win 10 games or more in a season, and the team has won only one Big Ten regular season title in its history. Last season 20 of NU’s 26 losses were by double digits. McKeown already has started to change the players’ mindsets.
The next step is to alter public perception by being more competitive on the floor.
Fortunately, McKeown thinks the recruiting potential is brighter in Evanston. He said it should be easier to sell top prospects on playing in a renowned conference like the Big Ten, opening up a pool of players he could not attract to George Washington despite the program’s success. McKeown cited the example of Jaeschke, who was a high school All-American and could have gone anywhere in the country but chose NU.
“I think here we do have the ability, because of the Big Ten, because of Northwestern, because of the campus, to go after the top student athletes in the country,” he said. “At GW we could get that next-level kid and make her better.”
It is hard to predict what kind of a season the Cats will have this winter. They were picked to finish last in both the preseason conference media and coaches’ polls. On the other hand, McKeown has won fewer than 19 games just once in his 22-year career, when he went 14-14 in his first year with the Colonials.
But in his first season McKeown is not nearly as concerned with wins and losses as he is in seeing improvement and laying the groundwork for the future.
“I really think we’re going to gauge our success by the foundation that we build, not so much numbers and tournament appearances,” he said. “All those things will take care of themselves if we can just build a solid work ethic and recruiting efforts and foundation with the players that we have here. You got to be a little bit lucky, you got to stay healthy, things have to go your way, but the potential is here.”
