12/18/24
February 07, 2009
1,000: with a home-court victory over UGA on Thursday, Pat Summit became the first Div I basketball coach to click the odometer over to four digits.
posted by lil_brown_bat to basketball at 03:40 PM - 6 comments
Summit is a real class act (and I write that as an enormous UConn fan). She is among the great coaches of all time and seeing that she made this milestone made me smile so hard my face hurt. Hurray!
posted by Joey Michaels at 05:45 PM on February 07, 2009
Joey, also a huge UConn fan here who can't help but be a huge Pat Summit fan as well. The really amazing thing is how young she is. According to the article, there are only two other coaches who have gone over 900 career victories -- Bobby Knight and Jody Conradt -- and both are retired. I'm thinking it's long odds that anyone else will reach the 1000 mark for a long time.
beaverboard, I have a friend who's the head men's tennis coach at UT. I know nothing about their tennis environment, but I was very happy for him when I heard he was going to UT, which (if their hoops teams are anything to judge by) must be a great environment for coaches and athletes both.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 05:50 PM on February 07, 2009
Great coach, great program, one hell of a lot of wins. Wow, 1,000 wins. That's incredible. Hopefully she gets a lot more.
posted by dyams at 10:24 PM on February 07, 2009
Every bit as spectacular as the 1,000 wins is the fact that she became the head coach at age 22, and never had a losing season. Even Geno, who took over the UConn job at age 31, had a losing season (his first). It's strange how two people, who are as different as night and day, can have such similar results.
posted by pullmyfinger at 10:56 AM on February 08, 2009
Pretty amazing. What a life story...born and raised in Tennessee, and then goes on to coach at UT for that long.
The length of her career (which is a long way from over) and her winning percentage will make it almost impossible for anyone to catch her.
I certainly hope that Bobby Knight does not come out of retirement in an ill-advised attempt to get to 1000 wins.
posted by dviking at 12:34 PM on February 08, 2009
I like the overall hoops community they have at UT, with the men's and women's programs both enjoying success. It's a happy scene. Bruce Pearl must wake up every morning thanking his lucky stars he was given the opportunity to be part of an environment like that.
Peyton Manning looks way better sitting in the stands at a Lady Vols game than he does standing on the field in a Colts uni in the 4th quarter of a playoff game.