After simply three seasons on the job in Provo, Utah, BYU is shifting on from Amber Whiting. The Cougars formally introduced on Saturday afternoon that they’re “parting methods.”
Whiting had zero faculty teaching expertise earlier than being employed by BYU, her alma mater, in 2022. She had been a highschool coach, main Burley Excessive College in Idaho to a state championship. That success by no means actually translated to school although. In a single season within the WCC and two within the Large 12, Whiting by no means had a profitable document in convention play and went 45-51 total.
This season, BYU went 4-14 in Large 12 play, ending 14th in a 16-team league.
The earlier coach at BYU was Jeff Judkins, who led the Cougars from 2001 as much as his retirement after the 2021-22 season. BYU went to 11 NCAA Tournaments below his watch and twice went to the Candy 16. After a yr off, he’s now an assistant at Utah.
Filling this job at BYU can be troublesome for just a few causes.
First, it’s unclear how a lot the college and its boosters are prepared to rally across the ladies’s basketball program with the funding it would take to compete within the higher class of the Large 12. It’s apparent that assist is there for males’s basketball — the place high recruit AJ Dybantsa dedicated to the Cougars for a reportedly extremely profitable NIL bundle. The questions on cash relating to BYU’s ladies’s basketball program aren’t nearly NIL although. Will the Cougars give this sport any slice of the income sharing pie as soon as the Home settlement goes via? If that’s the case, how substantial will it’s?
The second impediment is discovering a coach who’s a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which BYU is the flagship increased schooling establishment of. It’s a part of the explanation why BYU needed to flip to a highschool coach the final time it had a gap.
BYU has stated publicly that coaches within the athletic division don’t have to be LDS members. That got here in a press launch in 2021 when the Cougars promoted Diljeet Taylor to the top job of the ladies’s cross nation group. The college stated, partly: “Whereas up to now head coaches all through BYU Athletics have usually been members of the church, it has been a follow however not a coverage.”
However of the top coaches of varsity sports activities that BYU sponsors, Taylor has been the lone outlier not too long ago. And her husband is an LDS member.
“It’s a troublesome gig and that limits the candidate pool,” a longtime assistant coach instructed SB Nation.
“BYU is so distinctive, I’ve bought zero clue what they may do,” one agent added.
What’s additionally unclear about this teaching search is who’s working it. Longtime BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe introduced final month that he’s retiring on the finish of the 2024-25 sports activities season and his alternative hasn’t but been chosen, at the very least not publicly. Will this rent be Holmoe’s, or will it fall to one among his lieutenants, like deputy athletic director Brian Santiago, or senior affiliate AD and senior lady administrator Liz Darger?
Whoever the following BYU coach is, one of many high priorities is obvious: The Cougars have to determine learn how to retain Delaney Gibb, who blossomed into one of many sport’s high freshmen this season. Gibb, a 5-foot-10 guard from Canada, was named Large 12 Freshman of the 12 months. Her 17.4 factors per sport had been the fourth-most amongst all freshmen nationally, and he or she was one among simply 9 gamers to common at the very least 17 factors, 5 rebounds and 4 assists per sport. Amongst that group, none shot higher from 3-point land than Gibb’s 39.5 %.
All that stated, right here’s a handful of coaches who may make sense for the BYU job.
Adam Wardenburg
Earlier than he jumped again into Division I teaching, Wardenburg was the top coach of the lads’s and ladies’s groups, in separate stints, at Division III Southern Virginia College, which – whereas not formally affiliated – embraces and aligns itself with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In his lone season as the ladies’s head coach there, he was named D3hoops.com Mid-Atlantic Coach of the 12 months after main the group to a 21-6 document – this system’s finest season ever. Wardenburg was the affiliate head coach at Utah Valley within the 2023-24 season, then grew to become the affiliate head coach on the Air Pressure Academy this previous yr. He’s additionally had previous stops at Southern Idaho and Utah State, the latter of which is his alma mater. Wardenburg matches the invoice as somebody who’s aware of Utah and LDS tradition.
Morgan Bailey
Maybe among the finest BYU gamers ever, Bailey was the WCC Participant of the 12 months for the Cougars in 2015 and helped them go to a Candy 16 in 2014. After a short stint as an expert participant abroad, she’s change into a coach with stops as an assistant completely within the state of Utah: Snow School, Southern Utah, Utah Valley, BYU and now the College of Utah. Bailey helped Utah Valley make its first NCAA Match ever in 2021, and the Utes are eyeing a March Insanity berth this yr as nicely. BYU might do worse than hiring Bailey, an alum with reliable faculty teaching expertise.
Lee Cummard
BYU might preserve its search in-house and provides Cummard, a former adorned males’s participant for the Cougars – he was the Mountain West Participant of the 12 months in 2008 – a shot on the head job. Cummard spent a season teaching with the BYU males in 2018-19, however has been a ladies’s assistant ever since, first below Judkins after which getting a promotion to affiliate head coach below Whiting. As an performing head coach for a short stint below Judkins, Cummard went 3-0 with spectacular victories over Utah State, No. 17 Florida State and No. 22 West Virginia. Cummard graduated from BYU in 2009 and served a mission for the LDS.