All Suzie McConnell-Serio wanted to do was sit down and watch the Super Bowl. Having coached the Pitt women’s basketball team to an 81-66 victory against Miami hours earlier, she practically earned the right to relax.
But, while the rest of America was prepping snack plates and pouring drinks, McConnell-Serio was staring down a night of watching film in preparation for Pitt’s next game against North Carolina State.
“I almost felt like I was hitting a wall, and I’m halfway through the conference season,” McConnell-Serio said. “Mentally, I kind of just wanted to relax. I wanted a night to just watch the Super Bowl.”
You could forgive McConnell-Serio for wanting just one night off. For the past four months, she had worked constantly to get every ounce out of her team, which is still just two years removed from a 36-game conference losing streak.
But that work ethic has helped McConnell-Serio bring the Panthers back to respectability much sooner than anybody anticipated. Pitt hired McConnell-Serio in 2013 after firing longtime coach Agnus Berenato, who guided the Panthers to their first NCAA tournament berth in 2007 and back-to-back Sweet Sixteens in 2008 and 2009.
The program fell on hard times shortly thereafter and plummeted to the bottom of the Big East Conference over the next three seasons. In Berenato’s final two years, the Panthers failed to win a conference game.
McConnell-Serio inherited a roster hampered by inconsistent recruiting over Berenato’s final few seasons and a program that was moving to the ACC, one of the best women’s basketball conferences in Division I.
After a challenging first season, the Panthers are back in the hunt for an NCAA tournament berth. A win Thursday night against Virginia Tech propelled Pitt to 16-8 this season, 6-5 in the ACC. Those six ACC victories are more conference wins than Pitt had earned in the previous three seasons combined.
McConnell-Serio refuses to discuss any postseason aspirations publicly — she referenced her 2013 Duquesne team that was snubbed on Selection Monday — but ESPN “bracketologist” Charlie Creme projected the Panthers as one of the No. 9 seeds as of Monday.
“People say all the time, ‘Change the culture, change the culture, change the culture,’ ” said ESPN analyst Kara Lawson, who played college basketball at Tennessee and against McConnell-Serio when the latter was a coach in the WNBA.
“But, if you want to do that, it becomes a commitment to your players and to how you want to play every single day. That part is not easy. It’s not as easy as saying a phrase. That’s something you have to put the time in.”
Massive makeover
After the 2013-14 season, her first as Pitt’s coach after six seasons at Duquesne, McConnell-Serio undertook a significant roster overhaul.
It started with bringing in one of the best recruiting classes Pitt has assembled in years, ranked as high as No. 15 by national recruiting services. All three members — Aysia Bugg, Stasha Carey and Yacine Diop — have played significant roles for the Panthers as freshmen, and that’s no coincidence.
With little recent success to sell, McConnell-Serio said she focused her recruiting pitch on early playing time. The message resonated with this group.
“I wanted to be a part of a program that’s not necessarily rebuilding, but coming on the rise, I guess you could say,” Bugg said. “I didn’t want to necessarily come into a program that was at the top with a bunch of players and me not being able to see a little floor time.”
All three are regulars in the Panthers’ starting lineup, averaging a combined 24.8 points per game.
The star is point guard Brianna Kiesel, but another newcomer, senior Monica Wignot, has been an important addition to the new-look roster.
Wignot had spent the past four years as an outside hitter on Pitt’s volleyball team. Her volleyball eligibility expired, but McConnell-Serio — who years ago tried to recruit Wignot to play basketball at Duquesne — convinced her to play one year on the basketball team.
“She even mentioned that they weren’t the best in the past, but great things are happening this year,” Wignot said.
Wignot said she expected to ride the bench most of the season. Instead, she has started all but one game, averaging 11.3 points and 6.2 rebounds per game.
“It kind of makes me feel some type of way, like I need to get in the gym,” Bugg said. “She hasn’t been in here for five years and now she comes in averaging double digits and everything.”
Common vision
It was not just the lack of talent that hurt the Panthers. McConnell-Serio said team chemistry plagued Pitt, too.
“I just think sometimes change is difficult,” McConnell-Serio said. “Some players embrace it, and sometimes it’s a struggle. But these players, in year two, the players that have returned have embraced it.”
Instead of being a liability, team chemistry has been an asset. McConnell-Serio has praised her team’s chemistry several times, including Thursday night.
The Panthers share the same vision and goals, said Kathy McConnell-Miller, Suzie’s sister and Pitt’s associate head coach.
“All the pieces are in place, and the biggest part of that is the fact that coach has found players that believe in the same things that she believes in,” McConnell-Miller said. “When you find players that believe in the same thing you believe in, you’ve got something special.”
McConnell-Serio’s attitude is infectious, Wignot said, something she learned when the coach was trying to lure her to join the team. Though Pitt finished last in the ACC a year ago and had failed to win a conference game the previous two years, Wignot believed when McConnell-Serio said things were turning around.
“If she has confidence in something, it’s pretty hard not to believe what she’s saying,” Wignot said.
Work, not luck
Of course McConnell-Serio skipped the Super Bowl. Even though a relaxing night of watching football sounded appealing, she had work to do.
While her team has exceeded almost every expectation this season, a large part of that is due to diligent preparation. That can’t stop now.
McConnell-Serio is still irked the Panthers were picked to finish last in the ACC before this season, and she said Thursday that the rest of the league is probably waiting for the wheels to come off. It drives her to continue working hard.
When McConnell-Miller was the coach at the University of Colorado, she often kept tabs on her older sister at Duquesne.
“I would check a score and see that she pulled it out in the last minute or she had another 20-win season,” McConnell-Miller said. “My [reaction] was, ‘Oh my God, Suzie is so lucky.’ But it’s not luck. She works at it. She works at everything she does.”
Sam Werner: swerner@post-gazette.com and Twitter @SWernerPG.
First Published: February 14, 2015, 5:00 a.m.