Women's Hoops Guru

(Guru's note: This is an enhanced version of a Tuesday print edition noteboook in the Inquirer sports section area of philly.com)

By Mel Greenberg

PHILADELPHIA — With the Dawn Staley era over, Temple is about to begin a new one as it searches for her replacement as women’s basketball coach.

Staley resigned last week to become the coach at South Carolina. Owls athletic director Bill Bradshaw is forming a search committee to go through the list of candidates.

"We're still in the process and not all of the members of the search group have been chosen," Bradshaw said Monday night.

He added that associate athletic director Kristen Foley, who preceded Staley as the Temple women's coach, would most likely be in charge of the day-to-day activities.

Assistant coach Fred Chemiel and operations director Mary Wooley have remained and will probably run the basketball office," said Bradshaw, who met with the Temple players Monday afternoon before they complete final exams in the classroom and head home for summer vacation.

As of now, everyone, including the previously committed recruits for this fall, plan to remain on the team, Bradshaw indicated.

Temple will be posting the address for applicants interested in becomig the next Temple coach and once it is known, the same address will be posted in the blog.

It could take up to a month to name the next coach, Bradshaw said, only because his schedule includes the annual Atlantic Ten spring meetings in a few weeks.

"We'll see how it goes," Bradshaw said.

The conference, incidentally, is still seeking a successor to former Atlantic Ten commissioner Linda Bruno.

Meanwhile, a few Temple hopefuls stated their intent Monday to apply.

Cheryl Reeve, a former La Salle star who is an assistant to Bill Laimbeer with the WNBA’s Detroit Shock, said Monday she would apply for the job. The South Jersey native also was an assistant with the Charlotte Sting, head coach at Indiana State, and an assistant at George Washington.

Holy Family coach Mike McLaughlin, whose Tigers advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Division II women’s tournament, said Monday he also intended to apply.

Former La Salle women’s coach John Miller, who led the Mount St. Joseph’s girls to a state title last season, has been mentioned as a candidate as well.

"I just had my best year in coaching," said Miller, who was named the Associated Press’ girls’ coach of the year in Pennsylvania. "But given my friendships (with Bradshaw and Temple men’s coach Fran Dunphy), I would certainly listen to what they had to say."

Former St. Joseph’s coach Stephanie V. Gaitley is not a candidate. The former Long Island coach was named Monday as the coach at Monmouth, where her son, Dutch, plays for the men’s team.

ESPN analyst Carolyn Peck, a former coach of Florida and 1999 NCAA champion Purdue, as well as the former WNBA Orlando Miracle, said she is not seeking a return to the profession, for now.

"I'm just busy getting ready for the start of the WNBA," Peck said Monday of Saturday's season openers.

California coach Joanne Boyle, who previously coached Richmond in the Atlantic Ten before rebuilding the Bears into prominence, said she intended to remain in the Bay Area, noting she turned down Duke a year ago when the job opened. The native of Philadelphia had been a Blue Devils assistant under former coach Gail Goestenkors, now at Texas, prior to moving to Richmond.

Some other names, several of which were noted in the Guru's blog when Staley talks with South Carolina intensified a week ago, have also been mentioned by head coaches in side conversations as potential candidates worthy of the Temple position.

Army's Dave Magarity, a native Philadelphian who has moved the Black Knights forward after the tragic death of Maggie Dixon after the 2006 season ended, was mentioned.

"You can't tell me Temple can't top Army with a package,"quipped one coach.

It's not known if Ohio State assistant coach Debbie Black has interest in returning to her native city.

A feisty point guard who became nationally known in the WNBA and former American Basketball League is a native of the Philadelphia area who starred at St. Joseph's.

Black couldn't be reached for comment on Monday.

Another well-known coach familiar with the Atlantic Ten mentioned South Jersey native Lisa Cermingnano, a former George Washington assistant now an aide at Vanderbilt.

"Coming from GW and Vanderbilt, and the recruiting success she's had would make her a good candidate," the source noted.

Connecticut assistant Tonya Cardoza is believed interested, according to several sources, but has yet to be reached for comment.

The former Virginia star was a teammate of Staley's in the Cavaliers' Final Four-era in the early 1990s and is a lifelong friend of the three-time gold medalist who decided to stay with the Huskies in 2000 when Staley wanted to bring her aboard on Staley's first staff.

Because of the friendship, Cardoza has known much about Temple over the years Staley was building the Owls into prominence, although the closest the two schools came to meeting each other was last November when UConn and Temple were in the Paradise Jam tournament in Puerto Rico.

Honoring Perretta.

On Saturday night, about 200 friends, former players and past assistants attended a salute to Villanova women’s coach Harry Perretta, who has completed 30 seasons with the Wildcats.

Villanova men’s coach Jay Wright and former Wildcats coach Rollie Massimino were among the speakers and the guests included Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese and former Atlantic Ten commissioner Linda Bruno, who was once in charge of the Big East women before moving to the Atlantic Ten.

Former 76ers and Comcast-Specator executive Dave Coskey, who was once the women's sports information director for Perretta, also attended.

Perretta, who is found of handicapping horses, jokingly recalled the time he coached a Big East summer all-star team in Toronto and when he learned the team was being housed across the street from a race track Perretta said, he immediately exclaimed, "I love you Linda."

Assistant Shanette Lee, who played for Perretta, offered a humorous impersonation of the coach talking to his team during a time-out.

Lynn Tighe, a former player who is ‘Nova’s women’s athletic director, also spoke, as did Drexel coach Denise Dillon and former players Trish Juhline and Lisa Angelotti Gedaka.

Dillon recalled Perretta’s recruiting pitch to her in a parking lot after a high school game: "You’ll never learn to play unless you come to Villanova."

Wright humorously noted that Perretta actually has coached for 120 years considering that "he coaches his own team, of course he coaches my team, he's coached John Beilen's men's teams at West Virginia and he coaches the Tennessee women."

The latter was a reference to Perretta's friendship with Vols Hall of Famer Pat Summitt.

The Wildcats' men's coach recalled a time when George Washington coach Karl Hobbs was visiting Wright and Perretta had barged right into the office, a trait that is common to most everyone Perretta deals with at the Main Lline school.

"`You know, you're zone is terrible,'" Wright said Perretta said to Hobbs after being introduced.

Between the jabs, however, each speaker professed a love for Perretta and some recalled how the famous upset of Connecticut in the Big East title game in 2003, ending the Huskies' NCAA-record 70-game win streak enabled the graduate of Bonner High and Lycoming College to become appreciated nationally.

Perretta offered a 25-minute retrospective of his life, from his boyhood days in West Philadelphia as a Monsignor Bonner student to the present. Virtually everyone from managers to assistant coaches to players to PR directors got a mentioned.

He remembered the time early in his era when "we once played three games in three days and drove the vans almost a 1,000 miles. We won the first two before we got tired from the travel."

Guests were given Perretta bobblehead dolls, which will also be a give-away at a Villanova women's game next season.

Afterwards, all the former players, including some who pre-dated Perretta's arrival, posed for a group shot.

As the Guru looked at the dias, he mentioned how it had just struck him that each of them had once been covered by the Guru as undergraduates. The exception was Maria Caramanico, who was one of the founding members of the Villanova women as a nursing student.

"I covered here, also," the Guru said, "but as a parent of a famous player."

Diana Carmanico became Penn's all-time scorer as a senior in 2001 when the Quakers won their first Ivy League title.

-- Mel