Duke women’s basketball head coach Joanne P. McCallie has led the Blue Devils to four consecutive Elite Eight appearances. On April 19, McCallie received a contract extension through the 2018-19 season. The Chronicle’s Matt Pun had the opportunity speak to McCallie about next year’s squad and what it will take to reach her first Final Four at Duke.
The Chronicle: Next year, you return five seniors who have really had to step up as leaders for this team the past two seasons. In your 21 years of coaching, how does this senior class compare to the rest?
Joanne P. McCallie: They’re just a great group of people. I don’t believe I’ve ever had five in a senior class before. It’s a first-time experience. It’s very exciting, and I love their experience—so many minutes played. They’ve had an opportunity to compete in so many different situations. So, I’m extremely excited, and they’ve all been working hard on various things and they’ve all had their own individual challenges to overcome—but what’s most important is what they can do together.
TC: These seniors have won the ACC regular season title and made it to the Elite Eight in each of their three seasons. How has that experience prepared them for this upcoming season?
JPM: Every year is different. Every year is a new start—so it’s obviously great to bank minutes and bank great championship experiences. We certainly have loved all of our championship experiences. But in the same sense, you have those experiences, but you want to grow them. You want to get better. It’s a brand new year. We have four fantastic first-years joining our team, and so you start all over again.
TC: In a (GoDuke.com) story that ran after the NCAA tournament, you said that no one spoke for three and a half hours after the loss [to No. 1 seed Notre Dame April 2]. What is it going to take to get the program through the Elite Eight, on to the Final Four and into a national championship game?
JPM: I think we really need to focus on us and be better at developing ourselves and better at challenging ourselves. It’s very much an internal thing. We’ve had some wonderful leadership, but it needs to be better. You’ve got to be ready to compete at the highest level to win national championships, and a lot of that starts with the players demanding [more] of each other. We’ve had some of that but not that enough of that.
TC: You mentioned your four freshmen earlier, and you have one of the top recruiting classes in the nation once again. How have you been so successful bringing the top players in the country to Duke, year in and year out?
JPM: Well, Duke is such a great place. I love our staff, and I love our team. Our team is unique and always doing well academically. And they have great personalities so they draw people. [The players] work hard in recruiting. Chelsea’s worked hard for us in recruiting in particular… but everybody gets involved at this point. It’s been great to see the difference in athletes that are drawn to Duke and are drawn to our team. It makes for great chemistry, and I’m just really excited about the young ones coming in.
TC: With only Allison Vernerey graduated, how do you see the freshmen fitting into the mix next season?
JPM: I think they’re immediate-impact people and I think they’ll have an opportunity to be immediate-impact on the court as well. It’ll be a very competitive situation overall. Our sixth player is going to be a very important position—that first person off the bench.
TC: Your coaching staff also gets as a new look as Hernando Planells and Michelle Van Gorp recently earned new positions for next year. How will they fit into the current coaching staff next year?
JPM: Hernando has got a great deal of coaching experience on the floor, head coaching experience at the NBA D-League level and also in Japan internationally. So, he will be coaching on the court with the guards, directing their development and working with the guards specifically…. Michelle is fantastic as well. It’s super to bring her back to Duke. She obviously had quite a history of great success as a student-athlete for Duke, playing for a national championship in 1999 and being a dominant force and playing many, many years professionally. I see her as being a terrific role model and somebody that can communicate to our players relative to the professional game and developing their games beyond Duke as she did.
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