{"id":276056,"date":"2025-11-06T22:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T22:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/276056\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T22:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T22:50:09","slug":"new-dallas-wings-coach-jose-fernandez-embraces-move-to-coach-paige-bueckers-and-her-wnba-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/276056\/","title":{"rendered":"New Dallas Wings coach Jose Fernandez embraces move to coach Paige Bueckers and her WNBA team"},"content":{"rendered":"

DALLAS (AP) \u2014 One of the biggest adjustments right now for new Dallas Wings<\/a> coach Jose Fernandez is not being in the gym for games at this time of year after more than three decades in coaching.<\/p>\n

The 53-year-old Fernandez will instead spend the next four to five months preparing for his first professional season and getting to know the current Wings players. They include Paige Bueckers<\/a>, last season’s No. 1 overall draft pick and WNBA<\/a> Rookie of the Year, and four-time All-Star guard Arike Ogunbowale<\/a> after she played only 29 games before missing the final month of the season because of tendinitis in her right knee.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to coach this group and I wanted to work with this franchise,” Fernandez said during his formal introduction Thursday, 10 days after being named the Dallas coach.<\/p>\n

Fernandez, who will be the team’s fifth coach over a seven-season span for the young Wings, said he spoke with Bueckers and Ogunbowale during the hiring process. He got to Dallas on Wednesday and watched Ogunbowale’s workout.<\/p>\n

Fernandez won 485 games and went to 10 NCAA Tournaments the past 25 seasons with the University of South Florida women, who began their season this week. The mid-major is playing another loaded schedule Fernandez had put together before another call from the Wings. The Bulls play five ranked teams in their first 12 games, including No. 1 UConn, No. 2 South Carolina and No. 3 UCLA.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a great situation,\u201d he said. \u201cI could have retired there, stayed there for the rest of my coaching career. I came here to win because I believe in ownership, I believe in the franchise and I believe in the front office and the partnership that we’re going to have to be successful here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dallas has another lottery pick in next April’s draft, and will pick no lower than third, then have two first-round picks in 2027. Bueckers was drafted No. 1 overall on April 14, eight days after leading UConn to its 12th national championship.<\/p>\n

The Wings won\u2019t start training camp until late April, when they hope to be in their new practice facility being built in Dallas.<\/p>\n

Fernandez was also approached by Dallas last December before then-new general manager Curt Miller hired Chris Koclanes as a first-time head coach from the staff at Southern California. Koclanes was previously on Miller\u2019s coaching staff in Connecticut from 2016-22, and helped the Sun reach the WNBA Finals in 2019 and 2022.<\/p>\n

Koclanes was fired after a 10-34 record that matched Chicago for the WNBA’s worst record in a season plagued by injuries \u2014 not a single player appeared in every game. The Wings started 1-11 and had to win their finale at Phoenix to snap a 10-game losing streak and avoid a second consecutive nine-win season. They are 19-45 since winning a 2023 playoff series, which was the first for the franchise since it moved to the Dallas area from Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the 2016 season.<\/p>\n

The Wings several times had to sign players to hardship contracts just to have the league minimum of eight players available for games.<\/p>\n

Even Bueckers, the runaway choice for Rookie of the Year and also the AP Rookie of the Year, missed eight games because of a concussion, an illness and later a sore knee. She still had 692 points and 194 assists that were the third-most by a WNBA rookie, while averaging 19.2 points on 47.7% shooting along with 3.9 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 1.6 steals.<\/p>\n

Miller said the main priority was finding an experienced head coach with sustained success. The Wings also sought a communicator, relationship builder, developer of talent, innovator and someone with international outreach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found our guy,\u201d Miller said. \u201cWhen you look at those buckets that we viewed as very important in the search, we found an experienced coach … a proven winner.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS (AP) \u2014 One of the biggest adjustments right now for new Dallas Wings coach Jose Fernandez is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-276056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276056","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=276056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}