STARKVILLE — Mississippi State has found its next women’s basketball coach.
Following the departure of Vic Schaefer to Texas, Athletic Director John Cohen officially announced the hiring of Old Dominion’s Nikki McCray-Penson Saturday morning.
And while McCray-Penson has only been a Division I head coach since 2017, her three years guiding the Monarchs and her nine-year tenure as an assistant to Dawn Staley at South Carolina have seemingly set up the former two-time Southeastern Conference player of the Year at Tennessee for success in her first major head coaching job.
After gauging national media members on the larger scope of MSU’s vacancy last week, The Dispatch again spoke with a number of those reporters to judge Cohen’s hiring of McCray-Penson to replace the program’s all-time winning percentage leader.
“She knows expectations because she’s lived them as a player, she’s lived them coaching at South Carolina, where the demands from that fan base are significant as well,” Howard Megdal, Editor-in-Chief of Fansided’s High Post Hoops, told The Dispatch. “But let’s also not underestimate that Old Dominion team — They are tremendous and they were especially effective on the defensive end of the floor. That’s going translate with the kind of players that are already at Mississippi State before you even take into account what Nikki is going to be able to bring in herself.”
Beyond her past stops at SEC schools, McCray-Penson provides a blueprint for the players she’ll welcome to Starkville to reach the next level. Following her standout career under Pat Summitt, the former Volunteer spent 11 seasons playing professionally — thrice earning WNBA All-Star honors and twice winning medals with the United States olympic team.
“If somebody says ‘Gosh, I want to be SEC Player of the Year and I want to be drafted and I want to a shot at the Olympic team and I want to play professionally,’ Nikki (McCray-Penson), did all of those things,” ESPN women’s college basketball writer Mechelle Voepel told The Dispatch. “She can tell you what it’s like and how she did it. And I just think that’s that that’s something you can’t you can’t replicate in some ways.”
McCray-Penson also walks into a situation that boasts a comparable rabid fanbase to her previous stops but isn’t the same rebuilding project those past jobs necessitated. At South Carolina, the program had reached the Sweet 16 just twice since 1990 when she and Staley took over. Further, at Old Dominion, the Monarchs enjoyed a long string of success under Wendy Larry — reaching 21 NCAA tournaments, seven Sweet 16s and the 1997 national title game during her 24-year tenure — but hadn’t reached March Madness since 2008 when McCray-Penson earned the job in 2017.
In both instances, McCray-Penson helped guide Old Dominion and South Carolina to sustained success both schools lacked in recent years.
“It’s hard to lose somebody that you’ve gotten attached to,” Voepel said in reference to the MSU fanbase and Schaefer. “But he left the program in really good shape. And so it’s a new coach coming in, but a coach who knows the conference backward and forward and has a lot to work with and knows what to do with it.”
“I think it’s a somewhat similar situation in the sense that fans are passionate fans and know the sport,” Associated Press national women’s basketball writer Doug Feinberg added. “And I think that will help her right away that she’s aware of that. And obviously when she was at South Carolina, same sort of thing and at Tennessee — so she’s been around passionate fanbases her whole career as a player and a coach.”
Finally, in addition to her wildly successful resume, McCray-Penson’s hiring offers another glimmer of hope in the fight for diversity in collegiate coaching. At present, nine of the SEC’s women’s basketball coaches are women — nine of whom are women of color with the addition of McCray-Penson to their ranks.
“The fact remains that getting more diversity at the head coaching level will only be better for the game of women’s basketball as well,” Megdal said. “The larger the talent pool that we have to choose from in the game of women’s basketball, the better it’s going to be because it’s casting a wider net. This matters beyond Mississippi State and this just matters more generally for women’s basketball that an elite prospect got this coaching job.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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