Candidates emerge for Lady Griz head coaching job

Less than a week after one of the biggest upsets in the history of the Big Sky Conference women’s basketball tournament, Montana athletic director Kent Haslam officially opened a national search for the Lady Griz head coaching job.

Haslam and a search committee of eight people will conduct the first national search for the position since 1978. That year, former director of basketball operations and head men’s basketball coach Mike Montgomery hired Robin Selvig. The former Griz standout led the Lady Griz for 38 seasons, advancing to the NCAA Tournament 21 times and winning a total of 865 games.

“Our intention since last spring has been to conduct a national search for the next Lady Griz head coach when the current season concluded,” Haslam said in a UM press release.

“I appreciate the search committee helping vet candidates and find the very best leader of this storied program.”

Here are the candidates Skyline Sports has confirmed have interested and direct contact with Montana about its open women’s basketball position. Every candidate has been confirmed for having interest in the opening through sources directly in contact with each coach.

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Mike Petrino

Petrino, a native of Kalispell, joined Shannon Schweyen’s first coaching staff when she took over for Selvig in 2016. He had previous stops at Wyoming under Joe Legerski (2011-2014) and Colorado on Linda Lappe’s staff in 2015 and 2016.

After graduating from Montana State Billings in 1999, Petrino spent 10 years coaching Central Catholic High in Portland, including the final five as the boys’ head coach. The Rams went 97-37 under Petrino, winning five Mt. Hood Conference titles and twice placing third at the Oregon Class 6A state tournament. He was named the Mt. Hood Conference Coach of the Year three times in his five years as head coach.

During his one season as the interim head coach at Montana, the Lady Griz went 12-11 overall, including 9-8 in league play. UM finished sixth in the regular-season standings but fell 65-58 to bottom-seeded Sacramento State in the first round of the Big Sky Tournament, marking the first time that a last-place team won a first-round game in the women’s tournament.

When Haslam appointed Petrino as the interim head coach, he indicated a national search would take place regardless of the finish of the Lady Griz during the truncated most recent season. And Haslam indicated Petrino would be a candidate for the open position.

Brian Holsinger

Holsinger, a native of Federal Way, Washington, is an alum of Western Washington who’s college basketball career started at Pacific. His head coaching career began at The Master’s College in Santa Clarita, California after he earned his degree from Western in 1999.

Holsinger, who is currently the associate head coach at Oregon State, spent two seasons as the head women’s basketball coach at Montana Tech in 2005 and 2006. Holsinger guided the Orediggers to the program’s first Top-25 ranking. Holsinger also engineered the biggest turnaround in Montana Tech history, taking the team from thee wins in 2005-06 to 16 wins in 2006-07.

Holsinger spent eight seasons at Washington State on June Daugherty’s staff, helping the Cougars go from a five-win team in the first season to consecutive WNIT appearances his last two seasons on the staff. Daugherty coached at Boise State in the mid-1990s when the Broncos were in the Big Sky. Montana State 16th-year head coach Tricia Binford played for Daugherty at BSU.

Holsinger is in his fifth season on Scott Rueck’s staff at Oregon State. Under Rueck’s guidance, OSU has qualified for eight consecutive NCAA Tournaments. The year before Holsinger joined the staff, Oregon State advanced to the first and only Final Four in program history.

During his time in Corvallis, Holsinger has been a part of a program that won a Pac 12 title and advanced to the Sweet 16 three times, including a run to the Elite Eight three seasons ago.

Mark Campbell

Campbell, a native of Mount Vernon, Washington, has spent the last seven seasons as an assistant at Oregon, including the last six as the associate head coach on Kelly Graves’ staff.

During those six seasons, Oregon has compiled 159-46 record, including three straight 30-win seasons that also included Pac 12 championships. The Ducks advanced to the Elite Eight in 2017 and 2018 before advancing to the first Final Four in school history in 2019.

Campbell is credited with recruiting Sabrina Ionescu, one of the great players in the history of women’s college basketball. The 2019-20 unanimous national player of the year was the first women’s collegian to surpass 2,000 career points, 1,000 rebounds and 1,000 assists in her career. She finished her career as the undisputed all-time triple-double queen with 26 in her career. She was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft.

From Oregon’s athletic website:

Campbell is undeniably one of the very best recruiters in the country, bringing elite talent to Eugene each year since arriving at Oregon. Campbell was the lead recruiter in the hunt for Ionescu, who was the top-ranked guard in the country and the No. 4 overall recruit, as Oregon netted the nation’s No. 3 ranked class in 2016. Campbell was instrumental in Oregon landing its first ever No. 1 ranked recruiting class in 2020, bringing in five players all of whom were consensus top-25 recruits and McDonalds all-Americans. Campbell has also been key in signing some top international players, including Berlin, Germany, native Satou Sabally, considered the top international forward in the 2017 recruiting class, and her younger sister, star power forward Nyara Sabally, in the 2018 class. 

Before Campbell joined Graves’ staff, he spent four seasons at Oregon State. He was Rueck’s associate head coach in 2013-2014.

Campbell, who played collegiate at Cal Poly, Clackamas Community College and Hawaii, started his coaching career with the Saint Mary’s men’s team of the West Coast Conference. He served as an assistant on Randy Bennett’s staff during the 2009-2010 campaign, helping the Gaels reach the Sweet 16 for the first time in program history as well as tie a school record for wins in a season (28-6). He originally joined the Saint Mary’s staff as director of operations in 2008-09.

In the Bay Area, he mentored a number of All-American guards including Patty Mills, a 2009 NBA draft pick by the Portland Trail Blazers, Mickey McConnell, the 2011 WCC Player of the Year, and Matthew Dellavedova, the 2012 WCC Player of the Year.

Seton Sobolewski

During his 13 seasons at Idaho State, Sobolewski has quietly built one of the Big Sky Conference’s most stable and steady programs. And this past season, the Bengals hit a new peak, rolling through the league on the way to the regular-season and tournament titles along with the second NCAA Tournament berth in Sobolewski’s career.

Last month, Idaho State completed one of the better runs in the Big Sky since the heyday of Selvig’s reign. ISU went 22-4, including 15-2 in league play. The Bengals played a pair of very competitive quarters in a 71-63 loss against fourth-seeded Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Sobolewski has led the Bengals to two of their four regular-season Big Sky titles in school history. He’s also helped lead ISU to two of its four all-time tournament appearances. He is 231-170 over the last 13 seasons, including 143-89 in Big Sky play.

Prior to the change in the Big Sky conference tournament structure where every team makes post-season play, Sobolewski led ISU to 11 straight tournament appearances, the second longest streak in the Big Sky during the same time period.

Mandy Carver

Carver, who is currently the associate head coach at Fresno State, has extensive ties to the state of Montana and the Big Sky Conference, including a playing career that ranks among the best in Idaho State and league history.

The Dillon, Montana native is widely considered one of the greatest women’s basketball players to ever come out of the Treasure State. Carver helped the Beavers to three Class A state tournament title games, winning the 1995 and finishing as runner-up in 1996 and 1997. She earned all-state honors all three seasons, leaving Beaverhead County High as the program’s all-time leader in many candidates. She was also an all-state performer in volleyball and track, earning an induction to the Montana High School Association Athletes’ Hall of Fame in 2011.

Selvig rarely ever let the best in-state talent leave Montana’s borders. But Carver went to Idaho State, ultimately carving out one of the great careers in ISU and Big Sky history. She became the first Bengal and one of three players ever in league history to score more than 1,000 career points and grab more than 1,000 career rebounds.

Carver finished her career with 1,538 points and 1,098 career rebounds. Her point total ranked 17th in league history and her rebounding total is the third-best in league history. Her 12.4 rebounds per game as a senior led the nation.

Her junior year, Carver averaged 14.3 points and 10.1 rebounds per game to help Idaho State win the Big Sky Conference and advance to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history. The Bengals went 25-5 (16-0 in conference) that 2000-01 season, setting the program record for single-season wins. She was named the Big Sky Conference MVP that season and was a three-time all-conference selection during her career.

Carver, who was named to the Big Sky’s list of its Top 25 women’s athletes of all time, played professionally for eight seasons, including a short stint in the WNBA. She helped lead her teams to championships in the French League, the Swiss Cup, Adriatic League, Bulgarian League and Latvian League. Carver was honored as the Swiss League MVP, Latvian League MVP, was a two-time All-Star selection in Greece and the Arab Clubs Tournament MVP.

Carver’s coaching career began with a season as an assistant at Cal State Bakersfield before spending 2011 through 2013 at San Jose State. She’s been at Fresno State since, serving as the associate head coach for the last five seasons.

Jamie White has been the head coach at Fresno State the last seven seasons, helping FSU reach unprecedented heights. White was the head coach at Northern Colorado for eight seasons before taking the Bulldog job, helping UNC transition from Division II into the Big Sky. White helped lead Northern Colorado to its first Big Sky regular-season title. That Bears team lost in the Big Sky Tournament title game to Montana in Missoula in the last non-neutral site tournament the league has hosted.

Jason Jesche

Jesche, a native of Dallas, Texas, has spent four seasons on Dawn Plitzuweit’s staff at South Dakota, including the last three as the associate head coach during one of the most rapid head coaching rises in mid-major Division I women’s basketball.

In Jesche’s first season as associate head coach, South Dakota won 28 games and advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in school history. This past season, USD again advanced to the Big Dance. Last year, the Coyotes were primed for one of the best draws in mid-major history after posting a 30-2 record that included a 15-0 mark in the Summit League. But the pandemic cancelled last year’s NCAA Tournament.

In the 28 years of the Summit League’s history, only three teams have ever run the table during the regular season. Two of those three teams were the Coyotes – in 2018 and 2020. The squad in 2020 routed league opponents by an average of 32 points per game.

Jeschke came to South Dakota after spending three seasons as the head coach at Oklahoma Wesleyan University. In that time, the Eagles posted a 58-38 overall record and a 31-24 record in conference play. Jeschke recruited and coached 11 all-conference players and one NAIA All-American at OKWU. His 2015-16 team finished fifth nationally in scoring offense with 83.5 points per game.

Jamie Carey

Carey, who just finished her first season as the associate head coach at North Texas, had a prestigious playing career before diving into the coaching ranks.

The 1999 Ms. Colorado Basketball was the 2000 Pac-10 Conference Freshman of the Year at Stanford before concussions sidelined her for the next two seasons.

After a year free of post-concussion symptoms, Carey transferred to the University of Texas, where she was maintained her elite play and became atwo-time All-Big 12 selection. At UT, Carey finished as the school’s all-time leader in 3-point field goal percentage (.418) and ranks second all-time in minutes per game (31.4). Carey’s 193 made three-pointers ranks fifth all-time, while her free-throw percentage of .801 is eighth all-time.

Those accolades helped Carey become the 31^st pick in the 2005 WNBA Draft by the Phoenix Mercury. She later signed with the Connecticut Sun. She played four years for the Sun, which advanced to the postseason each of those seasons, including an appearance in the 2005 WNBA Finals.

She first got into coaching at Legacy High in Broomfield, Colorado in 2008. She served as the head coach there for five seasons, compiling a record of 106-25. From 2011 until 2014, Carey was the head coach at Sand Creek High in Colorado Springs, compiling a 62-16 record in the process. During that time, she also served the USA Basketball as the assistant women’s national team director.

Following her successful prep coaching stint, Carey spent two seasons as an assistant at Colorado before returning to Texas in 2016. While serving on Karen Aston’s staff — who was briefly in the mix as Montana’s next head coach — Carey helped develop two of the top point guards in UT history.

Brooke McCarty was the 2017 Big 12 Conference Player of the Year and played for the WNBA’s Dallas Wings during the 2019 season. Sug Sutton was a two-time All-Big 12 Conference selection who was selected by the Washington Mystics with the 36th pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft.

Aston helped lead UT to four consecutive Sweet 16 appearances in the NCCA Tournament, including the Elite Eight in the 2015-16 season. But a first-round loss in 2018-19 and a non-tournament berth the next season resulted in Aston’s dismissal.

Carey joined Jalie Mitchell’s staff the following year leading up to the most recent season. Last season, UNT went 13-7, including 10-4 in Conference USA.

Jonas Chatterton

Chatterton, a native of Salt Lake, played college hoops at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana before earning his degree from the University of Utah. His first coaching job came in 1998 Westminster College, an NAIA school in SLC that at the time had just revived its men’s basketball and joined the Frontier Conference.

The current associate head coach at Oregon State — he’s served on Scott Rueck’s staff for seven consecutive NCAA Tournament berths, including a Final Four appearance in 2015-16, an Elite Eight berth two years later and a total of four consecutive Sweet 16s before this year’s second-round loss — has contributed to one of the best runs in school history.

Over the last seven years, OSU has posted a 177-47 record, including a 93-28 mark in Pac 12 play.

Before coming to Corvallis, Chatterton spent four years as an assistant at Colorado, which came with four post-season berths, including one in the NCAA Tournament.

Between 2001 and 2009, he was part of the BYU staff that helped the Cougars compiled a 157-89 record (.638), win two Mountain West Conference regular-season titles (2006-07), one MWC Tournament crown (2002) and advance to the NCAA Tournament four times.

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