The conversation began the way so many in the Seton Hall athletic department have recently, with an unsolicited suggestion for one of its two high-profile coaching vacancies.
“I have a candidate for your women’s basketball job,” said Rose Battaglia, the retired longtime coach at Paramus Catholic.
“Oh yeah?” replied Joe Quinlan, the athletic director. “Who?”
“Anne Donovan.”
(Insert pause here for stunned silence.)
"Anne Donovan?"
Quinlan walked down the hall to find Ginger Fulton, the senior administrator running the coaching search. She already had compiled a fine list of candidates, one that was about to go into the shredder.
“Rose Battaglia just called to say Anne Donovan is interested in our job,” Quinlan said.
(Insert sound here of dropped jaw striking the desk.)
"Anne Donovan?"
On and on it went, with everyone having the same reaction. Sometimes in a coaching search school officials will do their homework, conduct their interviews and identify the right candidate.
And then, sometimes, they catch a break. Seton Hall caught the type of break that could be a game-changer in its athletic department. The school introduced its new basketball coaches today, and Donovan towered over everyone on the dais both in stature (at 6-8) and reputation.
“As they were reading off all the Hall of Fames she’s in,” joked Kevin Willard, the new men’s coach, “I was thinking, ‘Please stop.’”
Willard, who hit all the right notes during his first moments as men’s coach, is forgiven if he had a case of résumé envy. Few in the sport, men or women, would feel differently. Simply put, Donovan is one of the most accomplished people in basketball history.
Two national championships as a player at Old Dominion. Two Olympic gold medals as a player and a third as a head coach. Enshrinement in too many Hall of Fames to list here, including the big one in Springfield, Mass.
“Are you all watching the women’s tournament right now?” she asked the audience after her official introduction. “Are you all sick of UConn beating up on folks? So am I!”
It was a great line, if well premature. Seton Hall has miles to go to catch Rutgers, the established power in the state, and St. John’s, the upstarts across the river that made the NCAA Tournament this season, before even dreaming about running down Connecticut.
Donovan inherits a program with a glorified high school gym as its venue, one that hasn’t been relevant in more than a decade. Donovan said “what I do is build,” and she’ll have to hope her name and success will carry enough weight with the recruits she’ll need to build here.
She wants to fill Walsh Gym and, eventually, move to the Prudential Center like the men’s team. It might be years down the road, but nobody ever should fault a new coach for dreaming big.
“Seton Hall, you’re not building your recruiting base on a big beautiful facility,” she said. “The kids we’re going to go after are the kids who want to come in here and build, and my name will hopefully help with that.”
She was not on the initial list of candidates for the Seton Hall job, much in the same way Coach K wasn’t on the list for the men’s job. She already had a higher profile job coaching the New York Liberty in the WNBA.
They had no way to know Donovan, a pro coach for 12 years, had an itch to get back in the college game. They had no way to know, after years of changing jobs, she wanted stability.
She called Battaglia, her mentor and her coach at Paramus Catholic, and asked her advice. Battaglia, who just two days earlier had met Quinlan at a high school game, made the game-changing call the next day.
There were details to work out, the biggest one being her contract with the Liberty. Donovan will coach in the WNBA through the summer, missing the prime recruiting season.
It isn’t an ideal way to start, but even that doesn’t have to be a negative. The best girls high school players are no different than the boys, dreaming of a professional career and the places Donovan has already been.
There are probably a handful of colleges in the country where the women’s coach has a higher profile than the men’s coach. Tennessee, with Pat Summitt, is one. Rutgers, with C. Vivian Stringer, is another.
Seton Hall put itself on that list today. “The only thing you don’t have on your résumé,” Fulton told her before she accepted the job, “is a national championship in college as a coach.”
Anne Donovan, the legend in the Hall who now works for the Hall, didn’t hesitate before replying.
“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.”
Steve Politi appears regularly in The Star-Ledger. He may be reached at spoliti@starledger.com, or follow him at Twitter.com/NJ_StevePoliti.