By Mel Greenberg
PHILADELPHIA - Holy Family women's coach Mike McLaughlin, in his 14th season with the Tigers at his almater, reached 400 wins Tuesday night after a 64-47 victory over University of Sciences in a Central Atlantic Collegiate Athletic Conference game at the Bobby Morgan Arena in University of Science.
The 43-year-old McLauhglin (400-59), whose team competes in Division II, became the fastest women's coach at any level to reach 400 wins and also faster than any Division I men's coach.
It's possible that he might have also been quicker than other men's coaches in other divisions but the data is still under research.
Meanwhile, weather concerns and obligations to his dates with his history kept your Guru here instead of north at the UConn-Rutgers game in Hartford to cover McLaughlin's impending win.
Before you ask, the Guru did not have faith in that other milestone occurring to grab a plane to Oklahoma City Monday night.
The print story on Holy Family will be somewhere in the Philly.com sports site.
The Guru, at the hour, is still playing with plane fares to attend the NCAA mock bracket session Thursday and Friday in Indianapolis and does not plan to be in Knoxville, when Tennessee's favorite rival, as opposed to former rival, will try to prevent Pat Summitt's 1,000th win with the visit from Georgia and Women's Basketball Hall of Fame ('07) classmate of the Guru's Andy Landers.
Summitt, incidentally, got victory 400 in game number 510.
As for Tuesday's night's quick particulars, to steal from the Guru's own print copy:
McLaughlin’s parents were in the stands to watch their son’s achievement, as were his wife Ginny; daughters Courtney (15), whose birthday is next week; Kelsey (9), and son Michael (12).
With the win official, Kelsey jumped into her father’s arms before McLaughlin’s players surrounded him with a big hug.
Holy Family has dominated the CACC, winning 59 straight conference games.
The Tigers enjoyed one of their best seasons last year, going unbeaten until the NCAA II tournament regional final and finishing 32-1.
McLaughlin, after Tuesday's game: "I give our team a lot of credit,” McLaughlin said afterwards. “Our players knew they could be part of history, but they stayed focus on what we wanted to do. We tried to avoid this pre-talk of what could occur.
“They were really focused to make this happen.”
Christine McCollum scored 20 points for the Tigers (19-4, 12-0 CACC), while Lauren Peters and Melissa Brooks each added 15 points.
Allison Weiss scored 15 points for the Devils (9-9, 6-4), who were hounded into 22 turnovers compared to nine by Holy Family.
“I just told our team that those that came before them contributed to this moment and put them in position to be here for this moment for 400 victories,” McLaughlin said. “The players before laid the groundwork.”
The Guru has more planned to file in two other blogs later Tuesday night for those who might be reading this now.
-- Mel
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