UConn alums Jen Rizzotti and Carla Berube discuss their first-ever coaching matchup
Before their teams played on Sunday afternoon, George Washington head coach Jen Rizzotti and Princeton head coach Carla Berube took a few moments to chat on the sidelines. Watching them interact, you could probably tell that they are longtime friends. You might even guess that, like many in their profession, they have caught up at Final Fours and other basketball events over the years and followed each other’s successes from afar.
You would be right, but you would also be missing much of the picture.
Rizzotti and Berube are also bonded by three years of playing together at UConn, including winning a national championship in 1995. Twenty-four years later, with nearly 40 seasons of coaching experience between them, they went head-to-head for the first time. Princeton picked up a 75–50 win on the road, giving Berube win number one against Rizzotti and win number two in her debut season coaching the Tigers.
Coaching against friends can be fraught, but both coaches were eager to see each other and expressed excitement about what their teams would learn from the game. Rizzotti explained that the series was created as a way “to challenge ourselves the last few years.” She said that she loves the challenge of competing “against coaches that I respect and that I think are going to make us better,” including Berube and her predecessor, Courtney Banghart. Berube also expected a tough game, saying on Princeton’s weekly “Conversations with Carla” podcast three days before, “You know [George Washington is] going to play really, really hard because … no one worked harder than Jen.”
The game was the first time in 17-plus seasons that Berube had coached against any of her former teammates. As Berube checked off that “first,” two of her players made history of their own: Bella Alarie tied the Princeton record with her 35th career double-double, and Carlie Littlefield had a program-record-tying 10 steals and narrowly missed out on a triple-double. “It was fun,” Berube said afterward. “I don’t love winning because then [Rizzotti] has to lose, but it is nice to come into GW and get a big victory against a really strong team.”
Naturally, Rizzotti was less pleased by the outcome, but she was optimistic that the game would help her young roster develop. Only two players, juniors Neila Luma and Lexus Levy, have competed for more than one season at George Washington, and the starting lineup featured Luma, two freshmen, and two transfers. “This is an opportunity for them really to look in the mirror and decide how much better they want to get,” Rizzotti said after the game. That was her main focus once the game started; despite the friend coaching opposite her, she said, “I don’t know that it felt any different than any other game for me.”
However, both coaches clearly appreciate how talented their counterpart is and took the opportunity to reflect on the other’s career more broadly. Berube said after the game that she was excited to watch George Washington’s progress this season, and it was evident that she’d followed Rizzotti’s coaching career for several years. On the Princeton podcast beforehand, Berube had also said, “She’s done a tremendous job at Hartford and at GW, and [she’s] someone that I admire a lot. I admired her as my point guard for three years, she’s been the WBCA president, she does so much for women’s basketball. … She’s just [an] awesome, amazing woman and a great coach.” Rizzotti reciprocated after the game with a call for more recognition for the 2015 Division III National Coach of the Year: “Carla’s coming from a background not only as a successful player, but more importantly as a very successful basketball coach, and I don’t know that people know enough about … her career at Tufts and the resume that she brought to Princeton.” Rizzotti called Berube “a perfect fit” for the Ivy League school and even drew a comparison to her own experience at George Washington: “I also know what it’s like to take over a program that’s really good because I did it four years ago, and it can have its own challenges. And I think that she’ll do a great job of navigating through those challenges and … allowing Princeton to be the best version of themselves.”
Berube and the Tigers left Washington, D.C., with a convincing road win and some new program records, while Rizzotti’s Colonials will look to apply what they learned from their first loss in upcoming games at Memphis and Maryland. Despite the fact that competing against Rizzotti means that one of them will come up short, Berube hopes to make it a tradition. “It’ll be fun just to see [Rizzotti] once a year and play against her,” she said on the Princeton podcast. “And we’ll know it’s always going to be a tough game.”
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