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T wo days after ending its season with a first-round loss to Wisconsin in the Big Ten tournament, Penn State announced that it would be parting ways with Coquese Washington and conducting a national search for her successor. The 12th-year head coach had built the program back into a title contender fol- lowing Rene Portland's stormy exit in 2007. But after winning three consecutive Big Ten regular-season championships, the Lady Lions drifted back to the lower rungs of the league standings during Washington's final five seasons and did not appear to be trending in the right di- rection when the Badgers brought down the curtain on their 2018-19 season. To athletic director Sandy Barbour, the 65- 57 defeat in Indianapolis on March 6 was "another symbol, another indication that we lost our competitiveness. And that, we need to correct." Barbour had given Washington a luke- warm endorsement when asked during a news conference in late December about the direction of the program, acknowl- edging the coach's successes but also ex- pressing dissatisfaction with the team's more recent results. "What we have to re- member is that this is somebody who has brought great success to Penn State women's basketball. It's not like she doesn't know how to do that, that she's not proven it, that she's not done it," Bar- bour said. "But I think the important thing for our student-athletes, the im- portant thing for our community, is that nobody believes where we are right now is OK, and that includes Coquese." Speaking to the media again on March 8 after she and Washington "mutually agreed that we would seek new leader- ship," Barbour said that the program's struggles necessitated a change, espe- cially given that Penn State has been a Big Ten title contender and NCAA tourna- ment participant for much of its history. "We all understand and have tolerance for an occasional competitive dip, and we can certainly hold onto expectations when the [program] appears to be going in a positive direction," she said. "Unfortu- nately, we've experienced a sustained pe- riod of noncompetitiveness, and our history and tradition say that we should expect more, that we can do better." Penn State went 209-169 under Wash- ington, including a 98-106 record in Big Ten play. The most successful portion of her tenure was a three-year stretch from 2011-12 to 2013-14 in which the Lady Lions, fueled primarily by the dynamic backcourt partnership of Alex Bentley and Maggie Lucas, won three consecutive Big Ten reg- ular-season crowns. Penn State compiled a combined record of 76-21 during those years and went 40-8 against its Big Ten ri- vals, and Washington was named Big Ten Coach of the Year three seasons in a row. But even in those years, postseason suc- cess proved elusive. The Lady Lions never won a Big Ten tournament championship under Washington and only reached the final once, in 2011, losing to Ohio State, 84-70. Their deepest forays into the NCAA tournament were Sweet 16 ap- pearances in 2012 and '14. When Lucas and fellow seniors Ariel Edwards, Talia East and Dara Taylor grad- uated following the 2014 season, Penn State stumbled and never really recov- ered. The Lady Lions plunged to the bot- tom of the Big Ten standings in 2014-15, going 6-24 overall and 3-15 in league play. In the four seasons that followed, they finished with nonwinning records in three. The Lady Lions went 67-88 overall (29-57 Big Ten) in Washington's final five seasons and didn't make the NCAA tour- nament any of those years. Their current five-year tournament absence is tied for the longest in the program's history. Washington's final season was ham- pered by injuries to a number of key play- ers, including an injury to leading scorer Teniya Page that forced her to come off the bench in the season-ending loss to Wis- consin. Page still averaged 19.2 points per game and won first-team All-Conference honors. She had 14 points and four assists while playing 26 minutes in the loss to the Badgers, her final game as a Lady Lion. But the team struggled throughout the year. An 81-70 home loss to Stony Brook, which had never before beaten a team from a Power Five conference, set an omi- nous tone in November, and when Big Ten play began, Penn State wasn't able to de- velop any consistency at either end of the court. The Lady Lions ranked ninth in the conference in scoring offense and 13th in scoring defense, and their 12-18 record (5- 13 Big Ten) reflected those struggles. In the statement announcing her de- parture, Washington expressed gratitude at having been given the chance to over- Washington's exit prompts coaching search | W O M E N ' S B A S K E T B A L L BETTER DAYS Wash- ington talks to point guard Alex Bentley during an NCAA tour- nament game against Dayton in 2011. In her 12 seasons at PSU, Washington guided the Lady Lions to the NCAA tourney four times. Photo by Andy Colwell

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