Harper is New Womens’ Coach – or – Fowler finally lands his Cougar(Catamount)

Kay Yow NCS Basketball Non-Revenue62

Sorry…but I didn’t make the moron create this opening with our funny title. (If you are confused, you can click here)

In the one of the world’s worst kept secrets of all time, WRAL is reporting that Western Carolina’s Kellie Harper is likely to be named head coach of the women’s basketball team. Based on SFN’s sources, Ms. Harper will indeed be the hire.

We welcome Ms. Harper to Raleigh and are looking forward to her restoring one of the pioneer programs of women’s college basketball! We are genuinely excited about this hire and apply our meaningless stamp of approval here.

The actual decision/hire by NC State is a great one; but unfortunately the execution of the hire was horrendous.

Why the decision took so long is anybody’s guess. Kay Yow was only been sick for the better part of a decade and passed away months ago. The basketball season finished almost 45 days ago. You will hear the excuse that a nepotism issue needed to be cleared by the slow moving bureaucracy. Whatever. Just remember this when Harper struggles in a couple of years because she basically had no recruiting class this year and potentially next year. (See Sidney Lowe’s late start in 2006 after Lee Fowler botched (a) his responsibilities in the search and (b) the transition to the new coach with our recruiting class who had signed LOIs that year).

About BJD95

1995 NC State graduate, sufferer of Les and MOC during my entire student tenure. An equal-opportunity objective critic and analyst of Wolfpack sports.

Kay Yow NCS Basketball Non-Revenue

62 Responses to Harper is New Womens’ Coach – or – Fowler finally lands his Cougar(Catamount)

  1. Greywolf 04/15/2009 at 10:32 PM #

    CStanley
    April 15th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
    “Looks like we lost some recruits during this.

    Hell, this time we let them out of their LOI before the coach was even hired. WTF? For once, I’d like for us to be hard asses and make these kids stay true to their word.”
    `
    Perhaps that would be in character for you but would be out of character for NCSU. This notion will not gather moss as it rolls down the hill… Perhaps we should let Ms. Harper worry about recruiting and coaching. We should stick to what we do well — bash LF. 😉

  2. Greywolf 04/15/2009 at 10:48 PM #

    “Look at the screwups on the facilities renovation management that ended with the projects being turned over to Wolfpack Club…”
    `
    Is there a reference (other than SFN) where a reader might find evidence of screwups? Are you sure these projects were “turned over” to the WPC? SFN reports the WPC took over because they were screwups.
    `
    I would think that with the volume of renovation projects occurring, the AD’s would have been up to their asses in aligators. Making a request of the WPC to handle some of the projects would be prudent management. The WPC would not be under the same time constraints in hiring if extra management were needed to complete the projects on time and with a minimum of problems. For those of you who are not in construction, solving problems is the nature of construction. Of course this line of thinking doesn’t attack Fowler but what the hell, it’s the way I see it from 40 years of construction management.
    `
    To be honest about it, the bending over backwards to make the AD look bad in this hire, IMO only makes some of us look stupid instead.

  3. GAWolf 04/16/2009 at 3:04 AM #

    Oh I see now. Sorry. I totally missed that one. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a great hire. Kudos to whoever should be given credit…including Fowler if that’s where credit is due.

  4. Wolf74 04/16/2009 at 6:06 AM #

    Personally I think this is a very good hire. However, it does not sound like Fowler. I would have thought he would have sat around doing nothing until the position was vacant and then promoted the Assistant Coach. Easy thing to do with little pushback since it was Kay’s request. It seems that someone else is pulling the strings. Maybe it was Fowler and if so, it appears he did a good job of hiring a non-revenue coach. BUT if Fowler is released in a few weeks or even months, I believe we will know that someone else stepped in and demanded more. I will wait and see.

  5. Thompson44 04/16/2009 at 8:19 AM #

    Is she married?

  6. wufpup76 04/16/2009 at 8:27 AM #

    “Is she married?”

    ^Our new coach? Yes. Her husband in fact has/had been an assistant on her staff at WCU during her tenure there.

  7. Classof89 04/16/2009 at 9:07 AM #

    I talked to my source in womens athletics at State last night. She made a couple of interesting points:

    (1) Anne Donovan may not have even applied for the job, even though she was looking to get back into coaching, because she is good friends with Glance and spent a lot of time together at the Final Four.

    (2) As you might expect given how this played out, there was a nearly complete boycott of the position by all the ex-Yow players who are coaches.

    (3) the current players are very upset by the hire (that’s not surprising, either, given any player’s emotional attachment to her current coach).

    (4) Pat Head-Summit (coach at Tennessee who Harper played for) anticipating that all this would happen, urged Harper to withdraw her name, but Harper obviously decided not to. My source was grateful that Harper had stuck with it, opining that the program needed a fresh start.

    It’s a shame this has played out as it has–it will be hard enough for Harper to rebuild this once proud program given how tough the competition is OUTSIDE the university, and now she will have to overcome dissension within the program as well. I think we can expect former Yow stars of the last 30 years to feel somewhat estranged at first, but I think it is absolutely VITAL for Harper to bring those folks back into the fold. She’s going to be walking in a minefield these first weeks and months.

    Anyone had any contact with any former Yow players who are supportive of this hire and are willing to give Harper the support she needs? I certainly think it is what Yow would have wanted…but right now this looks to have the potential to develop into something really nasty if the Wolfpack womens basketball establishment turns their backs on Harper.

  8. Classof89 04/16/2009 at 9:20 AM #

    Personally I think this is a very good hire. However, it does not sound like Fowler. I would have thought he would have sat around doing nothing until the position was vacant and then promoted the Assistant Coach. Easy thing to do with little pushback since it was Kay’s request.

    I have no source for this and it is purely my speculation, but I think you are completely misreading Fowler here…I don’t think he liked the “lesbian cabal” running womens athletics at NC State (Yow, Glance, Nora Lynn Finch), and Glance being the last one standing made the obvious target. I think he’s a dumb Tennessee redneck, and probably thought one of Harper’s main qualifications was that she had a husband (if you catch my drift). I think that is an appalling attitude, and I certainly hope I’m wrong, but many of us have obliquely referred to this undercurrent in womens sports.

    My source gave me some interesting insight into the history and development of womens sports in the 1970s. When I remarked that WCU wasn’t a womens hoops power, and therefore it appeared Harper had done a wonderful job she corrected me and noted that in the 1970s, before the NCAA and when womens sports were organized/managed by the AIAW, none of the traditional “big schools” in NC were the powerhouses…the powerhouses were schools like WCU and UNC-G that had strong Physical Education academic departments, since womens sports were non-scholarship and the schools with lots of female PE majors would therefore do better. I don’t think it is a gross exaggeration or mischaracterization to point out that in the 1970s, homosexuality was probably found at a greater frequency among female PE majors than among the general population. Thus, in many cases, these early programs (Yow among them) were organized and staffed by lesbians. Now that womens sports have gone more mainstream, you have this new generation of heterosexual female coaches (Hatchell, Mccallie at Duke)replacing the old guard (in many cases hastened along by unfortunate incidents of inappropriate relationships as has happened at South Carolina, Maryland, and LSU over the past 10-15 years).

    It’s sort of the womens athletics equivalent of how gay men are the first to move into blighted inner city neighborhoods (Glenwood-Brooklyn is the example in Raleigh from 10 years ago, neighborhoods east of Oakwood are the current example) turn them all trendy and upscale, and then the heterosexual couples with the kids follow them.

  9. bradleyb123 04/16/2009 at 10:32 AM #

    I don’t think [Lee Fowler] liked the “lesbian cabal” running womens athletics at NC State (Yow, Glance, Nora Lynn Finch), and Glance being the last one standing made the obvious target. I think he’s a dumb Tennessee redneck, and probably thought one of Harper’s main qualifications was that she had a husband (if you catch my drift). I think that is an appalling attitude, and I certainly hope I’m wrong, but many of us have obliquely referred to this undercurrent in womens sports.

    That would be kinda horrible, but this is still a straw man argument. Just because a lot of bloggers allude to this concept in their posts does not mean it is true. I heard Fowler had his issues with Glance, but I don’t know exactly what those issues are (or if it was even true). But even if he did, none of us knows if his issue was her being a lesbian.

    Having said all that, Fowler still needs to go. I hope that is included in the press conference later this afternoon!

  10. pack44fan 04/16/2009 at 1:14 PM #

    Good hire!!! The athletics dept needs new, energetic blood like Ms Harper. Good luck to Coach Harper and Coach Glance. In the long run, it may have been the best thing for Coach Glance for if she had been named Head Coach, she would have been forever under Coach Yow’s shadow. A fresh start for her maybe what the doctor ordered.

  11. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 04/16/2009 at 1:53 PM #

    Welcome Coach H.

  12. WolftownVA81 04/16/2009 at 4:29 PM #

    Welcome to the Wolfpack family Ms. Harper. Best of luck to you as you work to turn our women’s BB program around. Now, one more vacancy to create and fill.

    As far as the title goes, I’m sure no one intended any offense to Ms. Harper. Aren’t blogs suppose to be entertaining as well as informative?

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