Tim Craft looks to build on last year’s 22-win season

It was three years ago that Alex Gary, Western Carolina University’s director of athletics, scheduled a four-year, home-and-home series to play Gardner-Webb in men’s basketball. It seemed innocent enough at the time, until the Bulldogs won the first meeting. Then the second. And then the third. Gary couldn’t help but take notice. How was this small school in Boiling Springs repeatedly serving up L’s to the Catamounts? “I reached out to their leadership there and I just wanted to understand how they were able to sort of punch above their weight, how they were able to exceed expectations relative to some of those in their league, with similar resources relative to their conference peers,” Gary said.

So, when WCU lost head coach Justin Gray, who led the Catamounts to a 22-10 record last year, to Coastal Carolina following the season, Gary wasted no time identifying Gardner-Webb coach Tim Craft as a replacement. “Playing coach Craft’s teams over the past three years allowed me to become very familiar with the identity of a Tim Craft-coached basketball team,” Gary said. “When you go 0-3 over the past three years, it kind of makes you pay attention to what’s happening on the other side.” Craft, who was named WCU’s 20th men’s basketball coach, comes to the Catamounts after an 11-year career at Gardner-Webb, where his team’s averaged 17 wins per season. His 2019-19 team won the Big South tournament championship, posting 23 wins including a pair against Atlantic Coast Conference teams Georgia Tech and Wake Forest.

Craft is the only Big South coach to post 10 seasons of 10 or more league wins in conference history. The Bulldogs never finished lower than sixth in the Big South during his tenure. With that success, Craft said it was time for a new challenge. “This wasn’t something we were necessarily thinking about,” he said. “But when Justin left, Alex called and it was like, ‘Wow, this sounds great. It sounds like it’s a good fit for me and my family.’ It’s a conference that we want to coach in and it just seemed like the right time.” Now he looks forward to not only bringing that success to Cullowhee, but to continuing building on the winning foundation that was laid by his predecessor Gray. “What a great time to be a part of Catamount basketball,” Craft said. “The opportunity for me to walk in here after what those guys did last year, 22 wins, two Power-5 road wins beating Vanderbilt and Notre Dame, finished fourth in the SoCon. What a great culture that has been left here by those coaches and those players. We are fired up to build on this foundation and we’re going to do that.” And hopefully that includes finally beating Gardner-Webb.

Jonathan Tsipis hired to turnaround women’s program

With 18.9 million viewers watching the University of South Carolina’s women’s basketball team topple Iowa and phenom Caitlin Clark in last April’s national championship game, it proved just how popular the sport has become. Not only was it the most watched NCAA women’s basketball game ever, but it topped the men’s national championship game between defending champion Connecticut and Purdue, which drew in 14.82 million viewers. Wanting to join in on that wave of excitement, Alex Gary, Western Carolina University’s director of athletics, decided it was time for the Catamounts women’s team to head in a different direction. So, he made Jonathan Tsipis the program’s 14th head coach. Tsipis takes over a WCU program that is coming off a 6-24 campaign, which includes a 1-13 Southern Conference record. In fact, WCU has not had a double-digit winning season since going 11-19 during the 2014-15 season. Since then, the Catamounts have had two winless SoCon records and has not won more than three conference games in a season. Needless to say, Tsipis has his work cut out for him in changing the culture.

That’s starts with bringing in talent. “I think the first thing we all understand in women’s basketball, and if you don’t, you’re probably not going to be in it very long, is that recruiting is your blood line,” Tsipis said. “The geographic setting of Cullowhee and the university, you’re able to get to some really great basketball hotbeds rather quickly. If you draw a three-hour radius around, you’re able to get to Atlanta, Knoxville, obviously Charlotte, and even past that.” Tsipis comes to WCU from Marquette, where he spent the last two seasons as the adviser for scouting and analytics. Prior to that, he spent five seasons as the head coach at the University of Wisconsin where he led the Badgers to their best finish in nearly a decade with 15 wins in 2018-19. He also was the head coach at George Washington for four seasons, leading the Colonels to a 92-38 record. His final two seasons saw George Washington go 55-11 with two NCAA tournament appearances.

“I cannot be more thrilled for the person and the coach we have leading our women’s basketball program,” Gary said. Tsipis sees changing the current culture as his biggest challenge. “It’s not all of a sudden come Nov. 4 that’s when we see the winning and losing start,” he said. “It’s already started with conversations. I’m a big believer that losing doesn’t hurt if winning doesn’t matter. We have to change that. Culture is always evolving. You have to work on it. It’s going to have ebbs and flows.” The move to Cullowhee is a homecoming of sorts for Tsipis. His family moved to Durham when he was a junior in high school. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.