The last time the Georgia Tech women’s basketball team visited Des Moines, Iowa, the Yellow Jackets were in a hotel so close to the interstate that they found earplugs on their pillows.
“So I was like, ‘Not a good sign,’” coach MaChelle Joseph said this week.
They are stationed this time in quieter environs. It isn’t only Joseph’s ear canals that recognize that the Jackets have attained a loftier status. The NCAA bracket can do that, too.
On Saturday, Tech will play undefeated and top-seeded Baylor in the Des Moines, Iowa, regional. The 2:30 p.m. game, broadcast on ESPN, will be its first Sweet 16 appearance.
“It feels like we actually have accomplished a milestone,” Joseph said. “It’s always been one steppingstone after another, every year.”
Joseph’s path in her nine-year career at Tech is indeed a trail of steppingstones tracing a steady incline. Since then-athletic director Dave Braine promoted Joseph into her first head coaching job at the age of 33 in 2003, Joseph has guided the Jackets to unprecedented heights.
Starting in the 2005-06 season, Joseph’s third, Tech has won as many or more games than the previous season seven years in a row, including 26-8 this season. Tech has made the NCAA tournament six consecutive years, including this season, after making two appearances in school history before Joseph’s hire. The Jackets broke down the Sweet 16 door last week with a 76-64 win over Georgetown.
Joseph’s own development has accompanied and abetted Tech’s. In particular, she has learned how to manage her relentless pace and crackling energy.
“I understand that more isn’t better all the time,” she said. “I think when I was early in my career, I think everything was urgent.”
More was the answer when her unbridled intensity fueled her to becoming the Big Ten’s all-time leading scorer, men’s or women’s, at the time of her graduation from Purdue. Experience has shown Joseph that longer scouting reports, more intense practices and louder outbursts aren’t necessarily the solution as a coach.
“I was too focused on, ‘I want perfection,’” Joseph said. “I started to understand it’s a journey. Success is a journey, it’s not a destination.”
Mentors such as Lin Dunn, coach of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever and Joseph’s coach at Purdue, have helped. Having increasingly better teams hasn’t hurt, either.
Assistant coach Janie Mitchell, who played for Joseph, acknowledges that Joseph will never be satisfied, “but we’ve been successful. We’ve accomplished major goals and minor goals, and it gives you a little breathing room. You can exhale a little bit.”
Joseph remembered a road loss to Florida State in the 2006-07 season that dropped the Jackets to 14-10. Upon return to campus, Joseph’s instinct urged a high-energy response.
Instead, the following day, she gathered the team for a meeting to hash over the loss, good and bad. Tech responded with six consecutive wins to earn its first winning record in ACC play and the first NCAA tournament berth in Joseph’s tenure. In the tournament, the Jackets won their opening-round game, the first tournament win in school history.
“I think as I matured as a coach, I understood that I ask my players for blind faith all the time, so at some point, I had to show some trust to get some trust,” Joseph said.
There are steppingstones yet to be reached. Tech has not finished higher in the ACC than third, which it did this season. The Jackets have a 34-game losing streak to Duke and have not won an ACC tournament title.
The next objective is “for us to go out and get one of the top five players in the country to stay home and come to Georgia Tech,” Joseph said. As is the case for several prep sports, Joseph is in the right state. Georgia has produced McDonald’s All-Americans in six of the past nine years, including this year, nine players in all. Georgia coach Andy Landers has claimed four, powerhouses Connecticut and Tennessee have split four more and Purdue took the last.
“When that happens, I think that’s when you see us go from NCAA tournament year in and year out, maybe a Sweet 16 here and there, to a national contender for championships in the ACC and beyond,” she said. “Because once you get one player to take that chance and separate your program, then others follow.”
The wait for that recruit may require more patience from Joseph. But at least she won’t need earplugs.
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