ESPN Women's Basketball

Every spring, the coaching carousel goes around and around. Athletic directors announce they've decided to "go in a different direction," which might mean anything from "I just can't stand this coach anymore" to "Here goes nothin'" to "OK, this time it's really going to work."

The most intriguing story line right now in the carousel is what's going on in the Pac-10. Fresh from helping Tennessee win its eighth NCAA title, assistant Nikki Caldwell hopes to become the new sheriff in town as she takes over at UCLA, the job that many think was the best of those that have opened recently.

Now, two of Pat Summitt's former players are Pac-10 coaches, as Niya Butts earned the Arizona job in March.

I was at the Black Women in Sport Foundation's convention here in Kansas City last weekend and caught up with former Kansas coach Marian Washington. For many years, she and C. Vivian Stringer were the only truly prominent black female coaches in Division I basketball.

In 1999, when Carolyn Peck led Purdue to the NCAA title, I wrote that few African-American players I had talked to over the years had expressed interest in being coaches at all -- let alone head coaches at major-conference schools.

But the door has begun to open in the past decade. Especially in the Pac-10, which now has four black women running programs. The others are Tia Jackson at Washington and LaVonda Wagner at Oregon State.

The "carousel" will continue to spin for a while as jobs get filled and athletic directors say they are "sure we've found the right person." In a few seasons, some will renew contracts. And some will say they "want to go a different direction" again.

It's pretty difficult to predict how assistants will make the transformation to head coaches. Every school can hope it hits big-time pay dirt, the way Duke did in 1992 when it hired an unknown assistant from Purdue named Gail Goestenkors.

But there is so much to manage (not micromanage), delegate and dictate (without turning into a "dictator") for a head coach. It's a big jump to be the boss of a program. There are greater demands on your time, countless problems you have to solve, a presence you have to create, discipline you must instill, kindness and caring you must be able to convey.

The best coaches never forget that even if they don't teach in classrooms, they are still educators working for an institution that exists to prepare young people to more assuredly get by in the world (at the very least) and maybe even make the world a better place. Which brings us to …

A coaching class act

Mark French has retired after 21 seasons at UC Santa Barbara, the program he turned into a consistently good mid-major. And that's a lot harder to do than it sounds. He went 438-200 at UCSB and made 12 NCAA tournament appearances.

Mark Patton of the Santa Barbara News-Press had a nice tribute to the head Gaucho earlier this month, describing how French left the sport he grew up playing and loving -- baseball -- to devote his career to women's basketball.

French has an instinctive understanding of what team bonding and emotional support means to athletes. But he also knows players needed to grow on their own, apart from their team, to become stronger individuals. He recognized when some of his players' different paths might take them through some pretty rocky places. Rather than be miffed about how that would "distract" them from basketball, he supported them.

When star Erin Buescher left the program in 2000 before her senior year to attend The Master's College, French could have thrown a fit. Many coaches would have. But French respected Buescher, listened to her and respected her need to follow her faith.

French's contributions to this sport and to the lives of the students who played for him are testaments to what coaching is supposed to be about.

A coaching celebration

Speaking of mid-majors, Louisiana Tech is one of the sport's former powerhouses that is in an ongoing battle to maintain its place in what's now a very different landscape. At one point, Tech and Tennessee were the only two programs to participate in every NCAA tournament, but now, the Lady Techsters have missed the tournament the past two seasons.

Good news for fans, though, came earlier this month when legend Teresa Weatherspoon, the heart of the 1988 NCAA championship team, announced she was returning to her alma mater as an assistant coach to Chris Long.

Tech definitely can use T-Spoon's energy and vitality in recruiting. It would be hard to find a better person to "sell" that program than someone who lived and breathed it, then went on to professional success.

Longtime watchers of this sport are definitely "rooting" for Tech because of what that program and its fans have meant to women's hoops.

A coaching comeback

But that's not the only interesting news involving Tech this spring. The program's coaching legend, Leon Barmore, announced recently that he will join former player and assistant Kim Mulkey on the sidelines at Baylor.

I know this probably is not being taken well by everyone in Ruston, La. A quick timeline: Barmore retired in 2000; Mulkey was considered the obvious successor but went to Baylor; there were various types of hard feelings among all involved parties; Barmore came back to coach; he retired again in 2002; his hand-picked successor, Kurt Budke, was quite successful for three seasons; Budke left for Oklahoma State.

Now, both Mulkey and Barmore are in Waco, of all things. That has to leave the Tech fans feeling a little forlorn.

Mulkey has never done anything but praise Barmore in all the times I've talked to her -- even after she left Ruston and significant negative emotion swirled around.

I think the rough spots those two had near the end of her stay at Louisiana Tech were inevitable and understandable. She apprenticed for a long, long time and was beyond ready to take over as head honcho. It was hard for Barmore to let go, and when he did, he found out that life away from the pressure and stress of head coaching was not so bad. But maybe, a little dull.

Now he's doing something that I think is a great idea: He still can do the part of hoops he loves, which is teaching, and with his mere presence he adds to Baylor's recruiting prowess.

And the Big 12's "Barmore Influence" -- already quite large with Mulkey, Budke, and former Louisiana Tech assistants Gary Blair (Texas A&M) and Kristy Curry (Texas Tech) as head coaches -- is now even bigger with the man himself joining the league.

A coaching question

The most surprising coaching move so far has been Boston College's Cathy Inglese "resigning." She went 273-179 in 15 seasons. BC was 21-12 this past season with a young team that finished fifth in the ACC and showed a lot of promise for the future.

I hope to have more to say about this situation later. But it certainly doesn't seem to pass an initial "smell test." The school's Web site has a puny five-paragraph release on the winningest coach in program history leaving. Does this add up?

A coaching cautionary tale

Well, I'll say this for the coaching staff at Southern Illinois: It introduced the term "jackass-less" to my cursing lexicon.

This spring, reporters from The Southern Illinoisan newspaper in Carbondale, Ill., have been chronicling problems in coach Dana Eikenberg's program, with the acrimonious departures of several players. A particularly detailed story was done by Pete Spitler in late March.

It described that this year's senior class learned of a sign on Eikenberg's door that read, "Conference & Jackass-less Countdown" that had a paper chain with the seniors' names connected to it.

That sort of thing puts a damper on Senior Night, doesn't it?

Eikenberg later apologized to the team for it … but then wasn't on the floor for the seniors' send-off. She provided a bizarre explanation for that to the newspaper, saying there was a "miscommunication" with the assistant athletic director for marketing about the specifics of the senior ceremony, thus she didn't know when it was going to be held. She said an e-mail about it was sent on a Friday night to an assistant who was out recruiting and couldn't access her e-mail that late.

OK … does this mean Eikenberg didn't know -- let alone set -- her own team's pregame schedule? That an assistant AD decided ceremony details on a Friday night? And then informed only one staff member, who was out of town and might be the only Division I assistant left in the country without 24-hour access to e-mail?

It's goofy that Eikenberg even bothered to offer such a preposterous reason for her absence -- considering she admitted to the newspaper that the sign was on her door. It's clear why she missed the ceremony.

Eikenberg, who played at Penn State, used to coach at UMKC. The disappointment of going 10-20 this season and no longer having "good-cop" assistant Jody Adams -- who had a very successful 2007-08 season as Murray State's head coach and just took over at Wichita State -- might have been a toxic combination for Eikenberg.

SIU athletic director Mario Moccia conducted an "extensive review" of the program and in a release basically said he felt everything would be fine. Which is pretty much absurd, but …

He might not have much choice, from a practical perspective. The newspaper reported that Eikenberg -- who signed a five-year extension after winning the Missouri Valley title in 2007-- is guaranteed her full salary through the end of the contract if she's dismissed.

SIU appears to be over a barrel. What school, especially in this economic climate, can possibly afford to pay someone more than half a million dollars to not coach the women's basketball team?

A coaching compass

Eikenberg is hardly the only coach and SIU hardly the only school that has ended up or will end up in a situation like this. It's a constant potential problem in all of college athletics.

Relationships between players and coaches can go bad, and sometimes there's no getting them back. And it can be quite difficult for even a well-meaning and skilled athletic director to successfully moderate between the parties.

And, yes, both technological and social changes have contributed to student-athletes having their parents involved in their lives and athletic careers in college to a far greater degree than even a decade ago. But that genie is never going back in the bottle -- the dialogue between most players and their parents is forever going to be more frequent and voluminous than it used to be. Coaches have to accept that and adjust to it, even if it makes their jobs more difficult.

Admittedly, parents are wise to remember they won't be able to fight every battle their kids face in their lives. Giving them advice but letting them navigate their way through issues on a sports team is sometimes the best course of action. However, there are other times when the coach is wrong. And parents can't always count on that person or the school's administration to do the right thing. Then parents do need to step in.

Coaches can lose perspective. They can abuse power. They can have emotional or personal problems they don't acknowledge or treat. They can be critical in ways that do absolutely nothing to improve the individual players or the team. And they can convince themselves and others that the players are simply weak whiners not strong enough to play for a competitive coach and program.

There are no foolproof solutions to all this. But athletic departments would be wise to have periodic conflict-resolution seminars for their employees and student-athletes (without disdain, eye-rolling or foot-dragging from coaches).

Another plus would be a workable, fair system that allows players to talk to school officials about legitimate problems with coaches before they reach crisis situations.

And departments must try to foster an atmosphere where coaches feel that they can ask for help without fear that will undermine their authority or jeopardize their careers.

Mechelle Voepel of The Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached at mvoepel123@yahoo.com.