Yesterday, just in time for a new beginning in the Atlantic 10 Conference, Athletic Director Cheryl Levick named the woman who will be charged with leading the Saint Louis University women's basketball team into a new era: Yashimbra "Shimmy" Gray.
Gray comes to the Billikens after a three-year stint as a top assistant at the University of Arizona, where she helped recruit and coach an all-American, Shawntinice Polk, and a recent WNBA draft pick, Dee Dee Wheeler.
Before her stay at Arizona, she was an assistant at fellow Pacific 10 power Washington, again as a top assistant. Both Washington and Arizona are perennial powers and participants in the NCAA post-season tournament, and Gray is hoping to bring that winning background to a Billiken squad that is coming off a 4-23 season, one of its worst years in recent history.
Gray was a standout in college at the University of Michigan and played some ball overseas in Portugal before realizing that her true passion lay in coaching.
This is when she started her gradual rise to the head-coaching ranks, which included stops at a community college, the WNBA and, as was stated before, the Pac-10.
Though tough, Gray sees the road back to respectability, and, past that, to being a highly competitive team, as a very do-able one.
"I am ecstatic to be a Billiken. Saint Louis University is a great University, and I was attracted to the quality of the school and Cheryl's vision for the department.
All the pieces are in place to turn the program around and be successful in the coming years," Gray said in a press release.
And she is right.
Though the end result was lacking last season, the Bills will return quite a few solid performers who will be better served after putting last year behind them.
In fact, of the returning team next year, 11 of them will be either a sophomore or a junior.
Couple that with the fact that the freshman class was on the floor for the Bills almost half of every contest, and the Billikens have the making of an anomaly: a team deep in experience but still considerably youthful.
Coming back for the Billikens is, well, pretty much everybody, but most notably sophomore-to-be guard Mia Johnson, who was recently named to the Conference USA all-freshman team. She led the team in points scored, assists and steals and she still has three more years to contribute and expand her talents and abilities.
In addition, Gray will benefit from the return of Marquita McFarland, a junior college transfer before last season, who led the team in rebounding and was second in the team in scoring, averaging just over 10 points a contest.
After that, there is a solid core of youngsters, like soon-to-be-junior Krystle Hatton, the team's best shot blocker, and another upcoming junior, sharp-shooting Rachel Diener, who had the best three-point shooting percentage on the team last season.
Add to them a stellar returning sophomore class highlighted by, aside from Johnson, Britney Artis, Jackie Gilbert and Heather King, and Gray has a lot of talent to work with for the next couple of seasons.
And so, a well-traveled, and winning coach, joins the program of a young, but promising, core of players who, only two short years ago, were in the post-season themselves. The Shimmy Gray era at Saint Louis University has arrived.
