WBB: new Badgers head coach Robin Pingeton wins opening press conference
The victories have to start somewhere I suppose.
“This is a great state for women’s basketball.”
New Wisconsin women’s basketball head coach Robin Pingeton isn’t from the state, but she already has an appreciation for what Wisconsin high schools and AAU teams do for the sport within state lines. Rebuilding the women’s basketball program at the state’s flagship university to even mediocrity is going to be an effort undertaken by more folks than just the Badgers coaching staff and Pingeton is absolutely right so start laying the foundation at her welcome press conference.
“We have to lock down the borders if we want to bring the Wisconsin program back.”
If this sounds familiar, it’s because Barry Alvarez basically said the same thing in his opening press conference before coaching his first football game at UW. Pingeton put on a masterclass in pandering to the fans on Tuesday afternoon beyond channeling her “inner Alvarez.”
she shouted out multiple smaller towns in Wisconsin when discussing recruiting the state
she gave the National Champion Wisconsin Badgers Women’s Hockey Team some love
she talked about playing “Jump Around” at the end of the presser
she wanted to bring UW WBB alumnae back to Madison more often and get them involved with the program
“It’s time to wake up this sleeping giant. What do we say? On, Wisconsin and go Badgers!”
Calling the Badgers a “sleeping giant” in the world of women’s hoops has been a familiar refrain of late. Moseley said this on March 29, 2021, right after she was hired, "Wisconsin has a rich and storied tradition of success in all its sports, and I am confident that our women’s basketball program will be joining those ranks in the future."
Her former boss, UConn head coach Geno Auriemma, also noted that “[Wisconsin] have everything," he said of the Badgers. "When you have everything, it comes down to you have to get the right people."
"To me this place is a gold mine. It's a sleeping giant and I'm ready to wake it up. We're approaching this that I don't want to over-promise and under-deliver, but we're trying to put together a roster together that can compete in March,” Pingeton told UWBadgers.com’s Andy Baggot in a column posted earlier on April 1.
This is all well and good, but I return to Auriemma’s “it comes down to you have to get the right people” thought. He said that Moseley was right for UW, which she wasn’t, so how can we tell if Pingeton is? “Winning the press conference” is a good first step, but everyone thought Moseley did too.
“#Badgers women's hoops coach Marisa Moseley -- witty, sarcastic, engaging -- won the Zoom presser.” This is the first sentence of a Jeff Potrykus tweet from after Moseley’s intro to the media in 2021 and it was the prevailing view from local and national media.
That can’t be Pingeton’s biggest win though. She needs to win the offseason and rebuild a depleted roster with Big Ten-level talent. She needs to win some games on the court early in the season too. Wisconsin is almost assuredly going to miss the NCAA Tournament for the 16th straight year, but there is no reason for them to miss the Big Ten Tournament in Pingeton’s first year.
She’ll have to get new players in quickly and, to her credit, it sounds like she has been working the phones consistently since she accepted the job. Wisconsin has been listed as a “school of interest” for myriad portal entrants by women’s hoops insiders which is in stark contrast to how things went under Moseley. “[I take] a relentless approach to recruiting. The portal and the phones have been very, very busy,” Pingeton said on Tuesday.
I liked that Pingeton said, “In our portal calls right now I’m trying to be transparent to a fault.” This seems like a strategy that has worked out well for Greg Gard on the men’s side and if she continues on that path it will pay dividends for the women’s team. Get the players you want and who want to be in Madison and then go from there.
Pingeton said all the right things on Tuesday and I came away impressed. I am still not convinced that she was the correct hire nor will I ever be convinced that athletic director Chris McIntosh conducted a thorough, well-reasoned search, but I have more hope that I’m completely wrong about her than I did a week ago.
Hope so too!