Carla Morrow brings new experience from a familiar face to Ohio State staff
The last time Ohio State head coach Kevin McGuff and assistant coach Carla Morrow worked together, it was an incredible success. McGuff hired Morrow to his staff at Xavier University during the summer of 2007. The two worked together for four years, compiling a record of 108–23 during that span, including a remarkable 42–4 record in conference play. They made the NCAA tournament all four seasons, won three conference titles, and even made an Elite Eight appearance for the second time in Xavier women’s basketball history. Now, they’ll be working together once again, attempting to bring a similar level of success to Ohio State.
After four impressive seasons together, Mcguff went to Washington; Morrow stayed at Xavier. The two continued their coaching paths independent of one another, each picking up additional knowledge along the way.
In the spring of 2017, the WNBA gave Morrow a call. The Chicago Sky, coming off a WNBA Finals loss, asked Morrow to join the staff. To work at the highest level, with the best basketball players in the world, it was an opportunity too good to pass up. “It was a league growing up I wanted the opportunity to play in. When that didn’t happen, I never envisioned myself coaching. To coach my very first game in Minnesota[the WNBA] was just amazing, a dream come true,” Morrow said.
Morrow is hoping to pair her WNBA coaching experience with her already impressive resume. She was an incredible player for Tulsa, becoming the only player in school history with 1,000 points and 600 rebounds. She finished her career as the school’s third-leading scorer, and by all accounts, one of the greatest players in school history. After her collegiate career, she signed a WNBA contract, although she never appeared in a game.
Once her playing career was over, Morrow went immediately into coaching. She didn’t demand a collegiate offer. She didn’t wait for a more glamorous opportunity. She just wanted to be around the game of basketball. “Well, I wanted an opportunity to start coaching right away, and there weren’t any opportunities when I graduated,” Morrow said. “So, I just went to high school and tried to learn the game from there.”
Morrow worked herself up from a high school coach to a basketball operations position at Missouri State, to the same position at Colorado, to an assistant job at Xavier, all the way to the WNBA. Morrow didn’t plan on climbing the ladder. She didn’t think she’d make it to the WNBA. She worked hard, and the success came as a result.
She spent three seasons with Sky, learning basketball at a professional level. It’s as if she went from earning her bachelor’s to taking master classes. She gained a perspective impossible to find anywhere else. Now, she’s bringing that experience back to Ohio State.
And it is an Ohio State team that will need experience more than most. The Buckeyes are welcoming seven freshmen to campus and have just one senior on the roster. They’ll be one of the youngest teams in the conference; their primary rotation will likely consist entirely of first- and second-year players. Yet, expectations are still extraordinarily high. They welcome in one of the top recruiting classes in the country and have the talent to be one of the best teams in the conference.
But as all young teams do, they’ll need great coaching to overcome a lack of experience. Having a coach who understands how the game is played at the highest level is a significant advantage, both in terms of schematics and understanding what it takes to compete.
McGuff is acutely aware of the impact the WNBA had not only on Morrow but the program as a whole. “I think that experience has been great for her. She loves the game, so she really took it very seriously to continue to improve as a coach,” McGuff said. “She’s brought a lot of really fresh ideas to our program since she’s been here.”
McGuff has always trusted Morrow’s basketball acumen, but now, she has an additional layer of experience. Her time in the league helped expand her expertise, particularly defensively. “The defensive schemes especially - she was really involved with that in Chicago with the scouting,” he said. “She’s bringing already a higher level of experience in that area to our program, so I’m really excited about that.”
For Morrow, it wasn’t just about the Xs and Os. Watching the best basketball players in the world helped her appreciate what it takes to be great. Now, she’ll try to relay that experience to one of the youngest, most talented teams in the nation. “If you look at Courtney Vandersloot and Diamond DeShields, those young women come in and compete every single day from the time they step on the court until the time they leave,” she said. “For them, it was a process because they didn’t do that all the time when they were younger. It can be done. They made the commitment to do that. That’s what we need to get these girls to do.”
And while her WNBA experience is valuable, it’s far from impossible to duplicate. Multiple NCAA programs have assistants on staff who have coached professionally. Plucking talent from the WNBA isn’t exclusively an Ohio State skill.
But what those other programs can’t duplicate is the trust McGuff and Morrow have already built. “She’s extremely trustworthy, so that was great to be able to bring her into the fold knowing that,” McGuff said. “But we have a great relationship, and I trust her obviously explicitly with anything.”
It’s like seeing your old high school friend after years at college. Even after a prolonged absence the chemistry and trust you previously built are still there.
It’s going to be a learning process. Ohio State is bringing in a host of new faces, as the team and coaching staff attempts to build chemistry on the fly. However, Morrow and McGuff don’t have to worry about that. They’ll hit the ground running with the trust they’ve already built.
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