Penn State Hires Tanisha Wright as Women’s Basketball Coach
After a couple weeks of searching, Penn State has found it’s newest women’s basketball coach, and it’s a former player in Tanisha Wright. Wright was a key starter on the early 2000’s Lady Lion squads led by all-time scoring leader Kelly Mazzante, playing in the NCAA Tournament all four years from 2002 through 2005. Tanisha went on to have a lengthy playing career in the WNBA and in Europe, winning a WNBA title with the Seattle Storm.
After retiring from playing, Wright went into coaching in 2019, spending six years as an assistant with the Charlotte Sting and the Las Vegas Aces before taking her first head coaching gig with the Atlanta Dream, where she went 48-68 in three years, and made the playoffs her last two years before parting ways. She then spent last year as an assistant with the Chicago Sky before her alma mater came calling her back home. After being a regular in the NCAA Tournament from the 1980’s through the mid-2000’s, the Lady Lions have only been to four Big Dances in the last 20 years, with the most recent trip being in 2014.
Needless to say, Tanisha will have her work cut out for her, as she will be returning to a program that is a shell of the one she played for. That being said, her extensive professional playing and coaching background and familiarity with PSU and the Big Ten certainly can only help as she tries to make the program a consistent winner once again.