{"id":235564,"date":"2025-10-23T23:28:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T23:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/235564\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T23:28:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T23:28:11","slug":"report-wings-nearing-deal-to-hire-longtime-usf-coach-fernandez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/235564\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Wings nearing deal to hire longtime USF coach Fernandez"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Dallas Wings are targeting South Florida&#8217;s Jose Fernandez to be the WNBA franchise&#8217;s next head coach, sources told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6744419\/2025\/10\/23\/dallas-wings-jose-fernandez-coach-hire\/?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=wbbtw&amp;source=twitterhq\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ben Pickman of The Athletic<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Fernandez, 53, has been in charge of the Bulls&#8217; women&#8217;s basketball program since 2000-01, managing a cumulative 485-317 record over 25 seasons. He&#8217;s taken South Florida to 10 NCAA Tournaments, including a run of four straight appearances from 2015-18. Fernandez also helped the school capture two AAC Tournament titles in the last five seasons, including last year&#8217;s campaign, which ended with a first-round loss to Tennessee during March Madness.<\/p>\n<p>South Florida&#8217;s CEO of athletics Rob Higgins confirmed Thursday that Fernandez was leaving the school &#8220;to pursue an opportunity to coach at the next level in the WNBA&#8221; but did not specify a team. Dallas has yet to come to an official agreement with Fernandez, reports Pickman, citing a source.<\/p>\n<p>Dallas is seeking a new face behind the bench to replace Chris Koclanes, whom they fired in September after the team went 10-34 in his debut season. Koclanes also made the jump to the WNBA from women&#8217;s college basketball, having been an assistant on Lindsay Gottlieb&#8217;s coaching staff at USC, but didn&#8217;t have previous head coaching experience. He did, however, have prior stints in the WNBA as a defensive coordinator for the Connecticut Sun and Los Angeles Sparks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Wings are targeting South Florida&#8217;s Jose Fernandez to be the WNBA franchise&#8217;s next head coach, sources&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-235564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}