“I lived in D.C. for 20 years, and I still look at Maryland as an ACC school. You got to keep up with the change.” — McKeown
Northwestern coach Joe McKeown’s 42 years of women’s college basketball experience is the force navigating Northwestern into an exciting yet undefined future.
“I’ve been in this a long time when the only ones in the crowd were parents or the referee’s spouse yelling at me and [I was] taking minivans 10 hours to get to a game,” McKeown, the Big Ten’s longest actively tenured coach, said Wednesday at Big Ten Basketball Media Days in Rosemont, Ill.
College basketball has changed since then. The Big Ten has 18 teams, spans coast-to-coast and is more followed than ever after averaging 361,000 viewers per game during the 2024 TIAA Big Ten Women’s Basketball Tournament – a 141% increase in viewership from 2023. For a school with just over 8,000 undergraduate students, McKeown’s perspective has Northwestern adapting to college sports’ shifting landscape ahead of the 2024-25 campaign.
“For the 14 schools that have been part of the Big Ten, there’s so much unknown about the four schools coming in,” McKeown said. “There’s this kind of uneasy excitement. [That’s the] best way to describe it.”
A big part of the uneasiness comes from the expanded travel schedule and potential impact on players. This season, Northwestern has a mid-January trip to Los Angeles to face Big Ten newbies UCLA and USC.
For Northwestern senior guard Melannie Daley it’s about going with the flow. Student-athletes already miss so much school playing basketball that although the disruption from travel may be daunting, growing the Big Ten is worth it.
“It’s one of the best leagues for women’s basketball, and the fact that it’s just been expanded is even more fun,” Daley said. “I think it’s going to be cool to be out in LA.”
The rising interest in women’s basketball has tagged alongside the conference’s additions. Partially thanks to the Caitlin Clark effect, the momentum of women’s basketball is palpable, especially with USC’s Juju Watkins, the 2024-25 Big Ten Preseason Player of the Year, primed to carry Clark’s Big Ten torch.
Looking at television ratings, the Big Ten Tournament finale between Iowa and Nebraska last season averaged over 3 million viewers, peaking at 4.45 million in overtime. The NCAA title game between the Hawkeyes and South Carolina averaged 18.9 million viewers – a record for a women’s college basketball game.
“We have a great window right now,” McKeown said. “Our game is so hot. We have great coaches and players. I think we have the attention of the fans.”
He also feels the shift in energy too. Walking into Big Ten arenas, he loves that you can sense there’s a game about to tip off, where 25 years ago you’d walk into an empty gym, or worse – have to wait for the men’s team to finish practice.
“The legendary John Thompson, [Georgetown’s men’s basketball coach], would lock the door so you couldn’t get in until he was done with practice,” McKeown said, reminiscing of his matchups against the Hoyas during his 19-year stint coaching at George Washington. “You had to bang on the window. You’d be out in the middle of the snow. Referees would be banging on the windows. We all had to wait outside. That’s how it was. And now when you walk in, you feel like there’s a game tonight. It’s important.”
The landscape has also shifted toward the transfer portal era, McKeown’s biggest challenge to coaching. With the makeup of teams changing quickly, now more than ever, recruiting is about the coachability and fit of players rather than their ability to develop. What a player can do in the next six months might be more important than what they can do a season or two down the road.
For Northwestern, that’s a change in program philosophy. With its academic standards and small student body, Northwestern doesn’t thrive as a hub for transfer acquisitions. Yet, because of COVID-19, the opportunity to use eligibility for graduate school has become a new recruitment avenue.
“We’ve always had great freshmen coming in as a group, the older players taught them,” McKeown said. “Now I’m bringing in kids that are older than my older players. I don’t know what to say to them, give them an AARP card or something.”
Alongside a class of four first-years, Northwestern brings in three transfers headlined by Brown graduate transfer guard Kyla Jones. A “quiet assassin” according to McKeown, Jones averaged 17.1 points, 4.7 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game, earning First Team All-Ivy honors last season.
McKeown raved about Bucknell transfer forward Grace Sullivan, emphasizing her ability to run the floor, while comparing Michigan transfer big Taylor Williams’ athleticism to former Northwestern first round selection Nia Coffey.
Northwestern’s seven new faces join four of the Wildcats’ five starters from a season ago as the Wildcats look to rebound from consecutive nine-win seasons, the fewest wins since McKeown’s first year at the helm in 2008-09. Last year, the Wildcats’ finished 12th in the conference in rebounds per game, 13th in field goal percentage and averaged over 16 turnovers per game.
“The past two years have been a little bit rough,” Daley said. “We’ve had some growing pains and so [McKeown] talks about how we come from a history of Northwestern being a top, dominant school in the Big Ten. He talks a lot about players in the past, our [assistant] coach, Maggie [Lyon], he talks about Veronica [Burton], he talks about Lindsey [Pulliam], kind of getting back to that type of culture. And so that’s what we’ve been instilling in ourselves in this upcoming season.
As the winningest coach in Northwestern history, McKeown’s vast wealth of experience is the trademark of his coaching style. His 42 years of coaching experience (including 38 as a head coach and 16 at the helm of Northwestern) is the Wildcats’ strongest attribute as the program enters a new 18-team terrain.
Yet for McKeown, basketball is still basketball, and the experience of his group’s core playing together makes him excited about the energy and prospects of this team.
“I think there’s some fundamental things that never change in our sport, and I think when you have unselfish players, it didn’t matter if it was 40 years ago or this week, they’re going to win.”