Why Tanisha Wright can return Penn State women’s basketball to its glory days
Tanisha Wright had made the walk before. She was strolling through the practice gym, by herself, much like she did when she played for Penn State basketball. It had been over 20 years since she played for the program, but the memories of that walk hadn’t faded.
And, this time around, they helped Wright realize how far she’d come.
“I was like, ‘Holy s---. You are the head coach at Penn State.’ .... It was a walk I had done thousands of times. It was very familiar,” Wright said to a small group of reporters after her introductory press conference.
Wright was introduced as Penn State’s new women’s basketball coach Monday afternoon, beginning an era that will attempt to bring the program back to its glory days.
And there may not be a better person to do that than someone who played for the program when it was at its peak. Wright was a player from 2001-2005 and made the NCAA tournament every year of her career with the team, including advancing to the Sweet Sixteen three times, with one of those runs going to the Elite Eight.
She has seen what it takes to get there. And that’s part of what made her so appealing as a candidate.
“Tanisha is Penn State Lady Lion basketball,” Penn State AD Pat Kraft said at her introductory presser. “She’s part of an era defined by excellence — Big Ten Championships, NCAA tournament runs, national recognition, and a reputation for toughness that became the identity of Lady Lion basketball.
“She didn’t just play here. She helped define what winning looks like as a Penn State Lady Lion basketball player.”
And even though it’s been over 20 years since she played for Penn State, that doesn’t mean she’s strayed too far from it.
Wright has stayed close to the program in the years since she left, attending practices and going to games when her schedule matched up with the team’s, and doing whatever she could to stay connected.
That’s why she may be as qualified as anyone to understand what has gone wrong and where the team has gone astray. And may be as qualified as anyone to fix it.
“I mean, there’s no doubt about it, the program has gone down, in the last decade or so I would say,” Wright said. “I’m a proud alum. I want to represent Penn State at all times. And so that is something that has been hard seeing it where it’s at. And so again, having the opportunity to kind of step in and rebuild the program and put it back in a place where we’ve always known it to be the — alum and people who’ve been here and had success here — I think that that’s been something that has been at the forefront when I started the conversations of whether or not this was the right time to do it.”
Of course, it’s not like Wright’s only qualifications are that she played at Penn State. She was a WNBA head coach for three years with the Atlanta Dream, and an assistant in the league for several years with the Las Vegas Aces and, most recently, the Chicago Sky. She cut her teeth as a coach as her playing career wound down, doing double duty as an assistant coach at Charlotte — her only experience as a college coach.
She has helped develop legitimate talent in the WNBA, and will have to do that to get Penn State back to where it was when she played there.
And she wants to do that, and do it in a way that resembles what the program was known for.
“As long as I’m around, we’re gonna play some defense, I’ll tell you that much,” Wright said, laughing. “You can count on that.”
That is an unsurprising response from a five-time WNBA all-defensive first teamer and a three-time Big Ten defensive player of the year — but it’s also an important one. Because the program, in recent years, has lacked an identity. There is little doubt that she will bring one back. One that night in and night out fans will know exactly what kind of team they’ll be watching in Rec Hall.
That will be necessary as she tries to get the Lions back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014. And it will be even more necessary as she tries to make that success sustainable. Because it’s already been proven that Penn State women’s basketball can be a winning program. Wright was a part of it before.
And she intends on being a part of it again.
