ESPN Women's Basketball

Rutgers women's basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer will be paid the same base salary as football coach Greg Schiano under a seven-year contract extension announced Wednesday.

Stringer will earn $450,000 in base pay and could earn up to $500,000 in additional compensation under terms of the agreement, Rutgers said. Schiano signed an extension in February with $450,000 in base pay but a total compensation package worth about $1.5 million per year.

The 59-year-old Stringer had one year left on her existing contract and said negotiations began on a new contract about a year ago. The new agreement will make her one of the five highest-paid women's college basketball coaches in the country.

"I think without question that my athletic director and my president felt I was clearly one of the top five, six, seven coaches in the country," Stringer said. "When it is all said and done, it is based on the success I had before, but more importantly, what I was able to do when I came here and where we were and where we have been on a consistent basis."

This past season, Stringer made a total of $605,800, which included $212,400 in base pay and bonuses of $115,400. In contrast, Rutgers men's basketball coach Fred Hill signed a deal a year ago that pays him about $500,000 in base pay and other considerations.

"There is no question this contract is well-deserved and reflects the success of the program and its status among the nation's elite," Rutgers athletic director Robert Mulcahy III said Wednesday.

Stringer is 257-125 in 12 seasons at Rutgers. She took an already successful program under previous coach Theresa Grentz in 1995 and elevated it to the next level, leading the Scarlet Knights to the program's only NCAA Final Four appearances, in 2000 and this season when they lost to Tennessee 59-46 in the national championship game.

In 2006-07, Rutgers finished 27-9 and won the school's first Big East tournament championship. They had won the previous two regular-season conference titles, before finishing second this season.

Stringer has an overall record of 777-260, and ranks third in career victories among Division I women's college basketball coaches.

The team became the center of a controversy after the championship game when nationally syndicated radio host Don Imus referred to them as "nappy-headed hos." Imus was fired for his comments, but Stringer and the team met with him and accepted his apology.

Stringer said earlier in the week that the national publicity she received for her role in the Imus affair would not distract her from focusing on coaching. On Wednesday she said she planned to stay at Rutgers "until I decide to coach no longer."

"I am ecstatic with the terms of my contract and it speaks volumes about Rutgers and certainly for Mr. Mulcahy and President McCormick," she said. "It told me they were committed to me and to Rutgers women's basketball and they are proud of the work I have done and they expect me to continue in the same vein."

Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press