Hegarty
hopes to take women's hoops to top
Mary
Hegarty takes over the head coaching position
for the Long Beach State women's basketball
team after building a successful program
at Chapman University.
Courtesy
of Chapman University
By
Paul DeCarlo
On-line Forty-Niner Mary Hegarty spent last
March coaching Chapman University to a second-round
NCAA tournament showing, while the Long
Beach State women's basketball team watched
from home, failing to reach the post-season.
Now, Hegarty is the new head coach of the
women's hoops program, and brings her impeccable
work ethic and direction to a team in need
of a lift.
"I
want my team to have the reputation of being
one of the hardest working teams around,"
Hegarty said, adding that the team needs
to understand how to play smart basketball
and differentiate between good and bad shots.
" If we work as hard as I know we can,
I think we can have a very successful year."
On
the heels of last season's coach Dallas
Boychuck-Bolla debacle, the Long Beach State
athletic department went out on a mission
to find a coach who could turn things around.
That is exactly what they got in landing
Hegarty, who resurrected the Chapman women's
program from non-existence to a top-25 national
ranking at season's end in 2002.
Over
the 10 years Hegarty spent leading the Division
III Chapman squad, all she did was build
a record of 160-92 (.635) while reaching
the NCAA tournament four times, with three
of those appearances coming in the last
three years.
"One
of the big differences (between the programs)
is that Long Beach State isn't at the bottom,"
Hegarty said. "At Chapman, I took a
program that had only won two games the
previous year, so pretty much everything
was going up from there."
The
jump to Division I coaching is not a major
area of concern for Hegarty. She was an
assistant coach at UC Santa Barbara from
1985-87 and at UCLA from 1989-93. Her experience
with UCSB will be especially beneficial,
since the Gauchos are the pre-season pick
to win the Big West Conference, after seven
straight conference titles and NCAA tournament
appearances in each of the last seven seasons.
Long
Beach State opens conference play at the
Thunder Dome in Santa Barbara, something
Hegarty is very exited about.
"When
I coached there, there weren't more than
a few hundred people there at best,"
Hegarty said. "I think it will be a
great environment for a game."
From
what she has witnessed so far, the Long
Beach State team's potential is constantly
rising. Hegarty said with some added structure,
discipline and better shot selection, they
will be a "much-improved team."
"I
like to play an up-and-down tempo,"
Hegarty said, adding that she wants to keep
defensive pressure up throughout the season.
"Not that I would call it run and gun,"
the coach said of the game plan. "It's
up-tempo, but with some structure."
Center
Jayme Connors, a 6 foot 3 inch sophomore,
is back this season and rejuvenated from
last year's ankle injury. She has already
noticed a change in team attitude.
"Everybody
[on the team] knows that they have to play
their part and do what they need to do,
or else we're gonna have to run," Connors
said. "The only thing that could really
stop us is ourselves."
Hegarty's
presence as coach is already making a difference.
The addition of two new backcourt transfers,
guards Aisha Hollans from the University
of Southern California and Val Willhoit
from Colorado State University, will pay
dividends in the future for the49ers. Both
players will red shirt this year, making
them eligible for the 2004-05 season.
The
rest of Hegarty's coaching staff is also
impressive, with Hall of Famer Denise Curry,
former WNBA player Vanessa Nygaard and eight-year
assistant Tuonisia Turner. Nygaard's five-year
professional career was played with the
New York Liberty and in Europe.
Both
Curry and Hegarty were each selected as
members of UCLA's greatest 15 players all
time. When Hegarty was a freshman, she set
the single-season record for assists at
UCLA with 240, in the 1980-81 campaign.
Many of those passes landed in the hands
of Curry, a three-time All-American at UCLA
from 1977-81, when the two played together.
"It's
a neat honor," said Hegarty of the
award she received back in 1997.
"I
was really flattered by it. It was a really
fun day, going back to Pauly (Pavilion)
and being with all my teammates."
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