Niveen Rasheed

Courtney Banghart named coach at North Carolina, ending dominant run at Princeton

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Courtney Banghart compiled a 254-103 (.711) overall record and 137-31 Ivy record (.816) in 12 seasons at Princeton while winning 89 more games than any other coach in program history. She now heads to North Carolina. (UNC Athletics)

Courtney Banghart took over as head coach at Princeton in 2007 aged just 29 with only four years as an assistant coach at her alma mater Dartmouth.

She leaves Princeton with 254 career victories and seven Ivy League championships, leading Princeton to its first ever NCAA Tournament appearance and then seven more en route to notching more than 36% of the program’s wins in its 48-year history herself.

North Carolina named Banghart its head coach Tuesday, seeing her as the key to a refreshing program restart after the messy exit of predecessor Sylvia Hatchell, who resigned earlier this month after 33 years at the helm in Chapel Hill, including a national championship in 1994, following an independent investigation finding that she made racially insensitive remarks to her players and pressured some to play through injury.

In its announcement of the Banghart hire, North Carolina Athletics led off by touting Banghart’s leadership credentials.

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Reports: North Carolina to hire Princeton’s Courtney Banghart as coach

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Courtney Banghart is pictured appearing on CNBC in 2015 after being named one of Fortune Magazine’s 50 World’s Greatest Leaders, talking lessons in leadership on and off the court. Banghart’s strength as a leader will have to come to the fore at North Carolina, where she is expected to take over to succeed longtime coach Sylvia Hatchell, who resigned this month after an independent investigation found that Hatchell made racially offensive remarks and pressured players to compete while hurt. (CNBC)

Early Monday evening, Jeff Gravley of WRAL in Raleigh tweeted that North Carolina is expected to hire Princeton coach Courtney Banghart to fill the same role at UNC. The Associated Press reported late Monday night that Banghart would take over the Tar Heels.

If true, Banghart would replace Hall of Fame coach Sylvia Hatchell, who led the Tar Heels for 33 years and resigned on April 18 after an independent investigation found that the coach made racially insensitive remarks to her players, pressured players and medical staff to get athletes on the court before they were medically cleared and developed a breakdown of connectivity between herself and her players.

The UNC Board of Trustees will hold an emergency meeting by conference call Tuesday morning and is expected to approve Banghart’s contract, Gravley reported,

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Ivy League coaches’ roundtables: About the brand, not the players

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In past years, the Ivy League office organized a teleconference call for the men’s basketball coaches, a few days after the preseason media poll. At those events, the coaches would talk about their teams, as well as answer questions from the Ivy League moderator and a small number of reporters. In addition, Reggie Greenwood, the league’s Coordinator of Officials, would discuss any rule changes for the upcoming season. This year, the league decided to do away with the call in favor of having roundtable conversations with the men’s and women’s coaches.

The two 30-minute videos, which were shot in New Haven on Sept. 5 (women’s coaches) and Sept. 12 (men’s coaches), focused on the general improved state of Ivy recruiting, the difficulties in scheduling nonconference games as an improved mid-major conference, the unique challenges in playing back-to-back Ivy weekends, the importance of the Ivy Tournament for late-season competitiveness, and the significance of the league’s partnership with ESPN.  What fans did not hear was anything related to the specific teams and players.

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Ivy League office selects all-time best women’s and men’s teams

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The Ivy League did something interesting Thursday – it tweeted out its all-time best women’s and men’s teams as selected by the Ivy League office, consisting of five players each. Check out the league’s selections with thoughts after the jump…

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