New Assistant hired by Coach Versyp

Somehow I missed the news that Kelly Komara had left the coaching staff of Purdue women's basketball.  Can any of you readers shed any light on that?   Coach Versyp has hired Beth Couture as her replacement.

While coach Couture does not have a background from any top programs or Power 5 teams, she does come in with a winning resume.  She coached many years for Presbyterian College in South Carolina as both an assistant and head coach.  Her teams had 8 20-win seasons and won 258 games with her on the staff.

She also brought a successful turnaround to Butler University as a head coach, having 193 wins in 12 seasons.  Most recently she has been an assistance coach at Cleveland State.  Overall her teams have amassed 455 wins over her coaching career.  She is known to be a hard-working student of the game and is good at developing strategy and making in-game adjustments.

Coach Couture also was a great player in college at Erskine, where she was named a Kodak All-American and scored over 2000 points.

She has a reputation of being a good recruiter and of building good rapport with recruits.  While we have seen two good recruiting classes in a row, we will see how her recruiting skills can build on that.  Also, it remains to be seen how she will perform in a rough and tumble, highly competitive Big Ten Conference.  Hopefully she can help Purdue get more high ranking recruits, which would be the biggest factor in helping this team get back to the national relevance it had in the late 90's and early 2000's.  A glance at the roster for this coming season would indicate that our Lady Boilers should have a very athletic team this coming season.  While there are a few concerns, building on the turnaround success of the past season is within the realm of possibility.

Welcome Coach Couture and we look forward to your contributions to the team.