When Pitt hired Suzie McConnell-Serio to revive its women’s basketball program five years ago next week, it seemed to be a perfect match for this town.
The most well-known name in that game in this area joining forces with the most prominent college team in Western Pennsylvania? That was a slam dunk both for McConnell-Serio and then-Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson in 2013.
“This will be my last job,” McConnell-Serio said then. “I don’t want to go anywhere else.”
Two athletic directors and five seasons later, that “last job” ended when McConnell-Serio was fired as Pitt’s women’s basketball coach. Athletic director Heather Lyke announced the decision Thursday afternoon and offered no further explanation than a brief news release.
It was a similar statement to the one Pitt made a little less than a month ago when dismissing men’s basketball coach Kevin Stallings, and now, less than 10 days after hiring his replacement in Jeff Capel, Lyke has another coaching search on her hands. In McConnell-Serio’s tenure at Pitt, she finished with a mark of 67-87 overall and 22-58 in the ACC.
A request to McConnell-Serio seeking comment was not returned, and as of Thursday night, only McConnell-Serio’s name was removed from Pitt’s athletics website. All members of her staff, including associate head coach and her younger sister, Kathy McConnell-Miller, remain online for now.
“We thank coach McConnell-Serio for her contributions to Pitt and wish her the very best in her future endeavors,” Lyke said in a statement. “In finding the next leader of our women’s basketball program, I believe this is an opportunity that will attract interest from across the country. We are wholeheartedly committed to building Pitt women’s basketball into a contender both in the ACC and nationally.”
That’s what the Panthers were supposed to become under McConnell-Serio, whose hiring aligned with the move to a new conference. If anyone is a legend locally in women’s basketball, it’s the former star point guard at Seton LaSalle High School and Penn State, the one who played on the Olympic level and in the WNBA before entering the coaching world.
McConnell-Serio got her start by winning WPIAL and state championships at Oakland Catholic High School, then went back to the WNBA and coached three full seasons for the Minnesota Lynx before resigning in 2006. A year later, she was back on her feet, taking over the women’s basketball team at Duquesne, where success came quickly.
McConnell-Serio guided the Dukes to five consecutive 20-win seasons after her first year on the job, making her an obvious candidate to move across town when Pitt fired Agnus Berenato in the wake of back-to-back winless seasons in Big East Conference play.
“I am a Pittsburgh girl through and through, and I told [Pederson] that I probably would have never left Duquesne for any other job other than this job because this is my home,” McConnell-Serio said then.
But things didn’t go nearly as well in Oakland. McConnell-Serio’s ouster follows a season in which the Panthers went 10-20 overall and 2-14 in ACC play, concluding with a 72-38 loss to No. 11 seed Wake Forest in the first round of the conference tournament. Pitt earned the No. 14 seed, upon finishing second to last in the league, ahead of only one-win Clemson.
In July 2015, former athletic director Scott Barnes rewarded McConnell-Serio with a contract extension that took her through the 2020-21 season. At that time, the Panthers were coming off a 20-12 record, 9-7 in the ACC, and their first NCAA tournament appearance in six years. A No. 10 seed, they beat Chattanooga in the first round before losing to second-seeded Tennessee, 77-67.
Spearheaded by senior point guard Brianna Kiesel, who was recruited by Berenato, McConnell-Serio’s second season would prove to be her apex at Pitt. With Kiesel off to the WNBA, the Panthers went 36-55 the next three years, including 10-34 in the ACC. The 2014-15 season is the only one in which Pitt finished higher than 10th since joining the ACC.
“We are excited about the momentum we have as a program right now and even more excited about what we can achieve in the future,” McConnell said after receiving her new deal in 2015.
Instead, McConnell-Serio’s time with the Panthers was plagued not just by losses, but also roster turnover. Although Pitt never sank as low as it was when she took over, it also never reached the heights it did under Berenato, who made the NCAA tournament three years in a row from 2007 to 2009, including two consecutive trips to the Sweet 16.
Last offseason, McConnell-Serio lost the face of her program when Vincentian Academy graduate Brenna Wise announced she would transfer after leading the team in scoring and rebounding her first two years. It was the second time in as many seasons that Pitt lost a two-year starter to transfer, as shot-blocking Cleveland native Stasha Carey left after her sophomore season in 2016.
Carey was a starter this past season at Rutgers, and Wise is expected to be a key contributor the next two years at Indiana. Both players left for programs that aren’t quite perennial powers but are having more success than Pitt. Rutgers won 20 games this season, and Indiana won the women’s National Invitation Tournament.
“I’m grateful Pitt helped develop me as a person and player. It was a tough decision to leave my home, my family, my friends and the city I grew up in,” Wise said last year after transferring. “But I had to do what’s best for me. To achieve the goals and objectives I had, I had to look elsewhere.”
Without Wise, Pitt lost to nearby Duquesne for the fourth year in a row, something of a cruel sidebar to McConnell-Serio’s coaching journey. The program she helped build remained clearly above the one for which she left, and in the end, that leap didn’t end on her terms.
McConnell-Serio’s final season ended Feb. 28, but Stallings was fired March 8, and Lyke had been searching for his successor since then. Replacing both basketball coaches in the same offseason is uncommon, but not unprecedented — not even for Pitt. In 2003, women’s coach Traci Waites was replaced by Berenato, and men’s coach Ben Howland left for UCLA, giving way to Jamie Dixon.
For her part, Lyke has now terminated her third coach since arriving at Pitt a little less than a year ago and will make her fifth new hire of a head coach. Not as much fanfare will surround this search as did the one she completed last month, but she must set her sights on fixing another moribund team, one that in June she referred to as “not anyone else’s problem; it’s our problem and it’s our issue to address.”
“Hiring a head coach is the most important thing that I do, I think, as the leader of the athletic department,” Lyke said last week after announcing the hiring of Capel. “And it’s something I think I do really well.”
Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko.
First Published: April 5, 2018, 5:13 p.m.
Updated: April 5, 2018, 10:37 p.m.
