Carla Berube is about to take on a massive rebuilding project in the Big Ten.
Northwestern announced Wednesday afternoon that it had hired Berube as its next head coach for women’s basketball. She has been the head coach at Princeton since 2019 and has been to five consecutive NCAA Tournaments.
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“This is a place where academic and athletic excellence go hand in hand, and I’m excited to build a championship culture that reflects that standard,” Berube said in a statement. “Competing in the Big Ten Conference requires toughness, discipline, and a relentless commitment to growth. We are going to embrace that challenge and build a team that competes with pride and goes to battle for one another every night.”
Berube, 50, succeeds longtime Northwestern coach Joe McKeown, who retired after 18 seasons at the helm of the program. Across his career as the head coach at three different Division I schools — he previously coached at George Washington and New Mexico State — McKeown won 785 games and guided his teams to 19 NCAA Tournament appearances. He announced last spring that this season would be his last, giving Northwestern a long runway to figure out who his successor would be.
However, while Berube was piling up wins at Princeton in the Ivy League over the past few seasons, Northwestern has struggled to find its footing in this new era of women’s college basketball where NIL, revenue sharing and the transfer portal have a massive impact on roster construction at the Power 4 level.
The Wildcats haven’t had a winning season in five years and haven’t played in March Madness since 2021.
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Four people with knowledge of Northwestern’s search told USA TODAY Sports the Wildcats were offering a head coaching salary of about $800,000 and told candidates there would be about $1 million in revenue-sharing resources available for roster construction.
Berube, 50, brings with her a decorated resume of excellence in the sport. She played for Geno Auriemma at UConn and was a 1,000-point scorer for the Huskies and a key contributor to the program’s first national championship-winning team in 1995. She was a two-time All-Big East selection.
The Massachusetts native then played professionally for a brief time before starting her coaching career as an assistant at Providence under Jim Jabir. In 2002, Berube became the head coach of Division III Tufts, where she turned the Jumbos into a powerhouse at that level, taking the program to 11 NCAA Tournaments and four Final Fours.
In 2019, Courtney Banghart left Princeton to become the head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Tigers tapped Berube to replace her. Banghart had built Princeton into one of the sport’s signature mid-major powers, taking the Tigers to eight NCAA Tournaments. Banghart’s tenure also included a 31-1 season for the Tigers and the first-ever at-large bid to March Madness for an Ivy League team.
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Berube was able to keep Princeton playing at an incredibly high level. In her six seasons, the Tigers won five regular season Ivy League titles, captured four Ivy Madness championships, and danced in March Madness in each of the past five seasons. The Tigers, a No. 9 seed this season, fell to No. 8 Oklahoma State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
At Princeton, Berube won a pair of NCAA Tournament games, defeating Kentucky in 2022 and NC State in 2023. She coached three players that would go on to the WNBA in Bella Alarie, Abby Meyers and Kaitlyn Chen. Berube went 147-29 in six seasons at Princeton, winning 83.5% of her games.
“First, we needed to find someone who was aligned with our culture at Northwestern. Second, a proven winner with NCAA Tournament experience. And lastly, someone who could navigate an elite academic environment in the most competitive athletic conference in the country,” Northwestern athletic director Mark Jackson said in a statement. “Carla Berube delivers on all fronts. Equally as important, we found a leader with a rare combination of fierce competitiveness, humility and the ability to develop players and people with compassion and dedication.”
Berube was named the Ivy League’s Coach of the Year three times and in 2015 won the Pat Summitt Trophy as the nation’s top Division III head coach. She’s a member of both the Connecticut Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and the New England Basketball Hall of Fame.
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With Berube leaving, one of the top mid-major jobs in the country is now open. Princeton athletic director John Mack has a national search for her successor ahead of him.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Northwestern women’s basketball hires Princeton coach Carla Berube
