It appears as though Pitt is making progress in their search to find a new women’s basketball coach to replace Lance White.
Athletic director Heather Lyke has been busy speaking with and in some cases interviewing candidates for the coaching vacancy.
Pittsburgh Sports Now has learned that Lyke was seriously interested in two candidates: UMass head coach Tory Verdi and former Bowling Green head coach Robyn Fralick.
PSN can confirm that Pitt had interest in Fralick but, over the weekend, she was hired as the new head coach at Michigan State. Fralick has a career record of 192-76 (88-73 at Bowling Green) and replaces Suzy Merchant, who was at Michigan State for the past 16 seasons.
In terms of Verdi, PSN previously reported that he interviewed with Lyke, and the two sides would be speaking again during a second round of interviews. It appears as though Verdi is one of the candidates on the short list as Pittsburgh Sports Now has been told that he is in Pittsburgh Sunday and Monday to speak with Lyke.
Verdi has been head coach at UMass since 2016 and has 25 years of experience has both a collegiate and professional coach. Verdi coached teams have advanced to postseason play 16 of the last 21 seasons since 2001-02. Prior to his time at UMass, Verdi was head coach at Eastern Michigan, where he worked for Lyke.
The Pitt program just finished its eighth consecutive losing season and Lyke made the decision to start over after White’s teams went 42-99 overall and 11-75 in conference play during his tenure.
Blow it up and rebuild yet again. Rinse and repeat.