{"id":192123,"date":"2025-09-30T11:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T11:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/192123\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T11:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T11:20:10","slug":"wnba-teams-may-find-perfect-coaching-candidate-in-indiana-but-not-with-the-fever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/192123\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA teams may find perfect coaching candidate in Indiana\u2014but not with the Fever"},"content":{"rendered":"

With four head coaching positions open, there has been much speculation on who may be ready to fill one of those positions. Sandy Brondello, who didn\u2019t get her contract with the Liberty renewed, shouldn\u2019t be without a WNBA head coaching job for long<\/a>. There are also quite a few current assistant coaches who look ready to step into a head coaching position.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fever assistant coach Briann January is one of those coaches<\/a>. However, she isn\u2019t the only assistant coach in Indiana who should draw some attention from the Storm, Tempo, Fire, and Liberty. One of those teams may just snatch top Pacers assistant coach Jenny Boucek away from Rick Carlisle\u2019s coaching staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During Pacers media day, Carlisle said that Boucek was \u201cchanging the game\u201d as the team\u2019s defensive coordinator. Comments like that should only make her an even more interesting target for WNBA teams looking for a new head coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jenny Boucek already has WNBA coaching experience<\/p>\n

After four years at the University of Virginia, Jenny Boucek played a few seasons of professional basketball. She earned a spot with the Cleveland Rockers in 1997 after impressing at an open tryout. After that, she played in Iceland and intended to return to the Rockers in 1998, but was released before the season due to an injury.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Boucek\u2019s coaching career was much more successful. She got her start as an assistant coach with the Washington Mystics. After that, she worked on the Miami Sol\u2019s and Seattle Storm\u2019s coaching staffs. In 2007, Boucek got her first shot at a head coaching position, leading the Sacramento Monarchs until 2009. She returned to the Storm, spending four seasons with the team as an assistant coach and two as a head coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After several years of WNBA experience, Boucek moved on to the NBA. When the Sacramento Kings hired her as a player development coach in 2017, Boucek was just the third woman to be an assistant coach in the NBA. After that, she moved on to the Dallas Mavericks until 2021, when she followed Rick Carlisle to the Indiana Pacers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Boucek is open to a return to the WNBA, her extensive experience would make her a compelling candidate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Boucek could also have a bright future in the NBA<\/p>\n

Boucek has spent a lot of time in the NBA, most of it with Rick Carlisle. Carlisle, who has been coaching in the NBA since 1989, told ESPN in June<\/a> that Boucek is \u201con a path to possibly be the first female head coach in the NBA.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NBA is about to enter its 80th season. In all that time, no woman has ever been hired as a team\u2019s head coach. In 2020, Becky Hammon became the first woman to act as head coach in an NBA game after Gregg Popovich was ejected. For a while, Hammon seemed destined to become the first woman to land a head coaching position in the NBA, but her success with the Aces<\/a> makes it difficult to imagine she will leave the team any time soon.<\/p>\n

Even the assistant coaching ranks don\u2019t feature many women. Besides Boucek, the most prominent names are former Stockton Kings head coach Lindsey Harding, the Raptors\u2019 Brittni Donaldson, and former WNBA player Mery Andrade.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With four head coaching positions open, there has been much speculation on who may be ready to fill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-192123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}