Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley are torchbearers of women’s basketball. But who’s next?
In the early 2000s, as the tide was turning toward UConn’s side in the Tennessee-UConn women’s basketball rivalry, the late Pat Summitt walked into her athletic director’s office and told Joan Cronan she wanted to ensure the Huskies were rescheduled the next season no matter what. Cronan, who oversaw women’s sports at Tennessee, hesitated. The Huskies were building and, in recent seasons, had gotten the better of the Lady Vols, prompting questions about whether the losses would tarnish their reputation or be detrimental to their recruiting.
Cronan questioned why Summitt wanted to continue scheduling the contentious rivalry. “Her answer to me was so consistent with her. ‘It’s good for the game, Joan.
It’s good for the game,’” Cronan remembered. “On every step of her journey, she wanted to always do what was good for the game. ” Summitt’s commitment to growing the game is part of her legacy and has been crucial to how women’s basketball got to this point in 2026 — women’s college teams receiving financial units for NCAA Tournament performances , record-setting television deals and viewership numbers booming.
Tennessee might not be the “Point A” for all of the growth in the game, but it’s a part of the foundation, no doubt. When Summitt was fighting to get women’s basketball on TV, using the intense Tennessee-UConn rivalry to get eyes on the sport, she didn’t know that someday women’s college basketball players would become some of the most famous athletes in the country, that the WNBA would have millionaire players or that the sport would have an undeniable foothold in the American conscience. Thanks in part because Summitt used her stature to advocate for the sport, that’s where we are.
And because of it, she’s one of a small group of coaches who’ve become single monikered: Pat. Tara. Muffet.
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