Hartford’s Valley leading a whirlwind life as Hawks head coach
Morgan Valley’s life is a whirlwind.
It’s not entirely unexpected, though. It’s what she signed up for when she agreed to coach at the University of Hartford.
“I get up, I watch film, I go to work, I plan practice, I watch film, you meet, you talk about things with other people on campus, then I have practice, then I go home, make dinner, watch film,” Valley said Monday by phone. “There’s just never enough time in the day.”
Valley is learning to adapt just like her players are learning to adapt. The former UConn guard, who won three national championships as a player from 200004, is still waiting on her first victory as a head coach. The Hawks have lost six straight games to start the season, including four by double digits.
“It’ll happen,” she said. “It’d be nice to happen sooner than later, but it’s just a process.”
Hartford went 2311 and made the WNIT last year — the program’s first postseason berth since 2013 — and is 5938 over the last three seasons. Kim McNeill left to coach at East Carolina in March, opening the door for Valley, a longtime Division I assistant, to land her first head coaching gig. She was introduced on April 18.
Valley didn’t take over a readymade roster, making the job a bit trickier. The team’s leading scorer, junior guard Jada Lucas, a New London native, played only 9.1 minutes per game last season.
“None of them really played college basketball before,” Valley said of her team. “Jordan McLemore played 12 minutes a game last year, a reserve that came in off the bench. Sierra Smith played 11 minutes a game.”
Valley, 38, says she’s evolved during her coaching career, one that began at
UConn as a student assistant way back in 2004. Over the next decadeplus, the Vermont native made stops at more than a halfdozen schools as a fulltime assistant: Holy Cross, New Hampshire, Towson, UMass, Virginia Tech, Washington and Arizona.
“I was a keeppoundingthedoor type athlete,” said Valley, who played in 108 games at UConn, averaging 2.6 points. “I only knew one way, and that was to work harder. That doesn’t always work. Sometimes you need to work smarter. I think I’ve become a players’ coach.
“I would say when I first started coaching, I was a big yeller and screamer. My dad came to one of my games, he was like, ‘You are awful.’ I just have kind of slowly learned how to tone it down.”
Valley has a strong support system to lean on from her UConn days, including Geno Auriemma and his assistant, Chris Dailey. She talks with them around once a month, as well as with Jamelle Elliott and Tonya
Cardoza.
The athletic director who hired her, Mary Ellen Gillespie, resigned in October, but Valley says like likes the support she’s gotten at Hartford, as well.
“It is like a family at Hartford,” she said.
What could’ve been: Granted, it’s early — very early — but Aliyah Boston is starting to look like the one that got away for UConn. The 6foot5 freshman has been arguably South Carolina’s best player, leading the No. 5 Gamecocks in scoring (13.7) and rebounding (7.5) and ranking second in steals (2.2). She’s also the nation’s top shotblocker, with 24 through six games, all starts.
Boston was one of the Huskies’ top targets in last year’s class. A dynamic player who went to school less than an hour up the road in Worcester, Mass., she had the size and ability to provide instant help in the frontcourt. It was an obvious fit, but Boston decided to go elsewhere, committing to South Carolina the night before Thanksgiving last year.
Three other fivestar prospects joined Boston in choosing South Carolina, giving Dawn Staley the nation’s undisputed top recruiting class. Boston, in particular, has stood out early on. She posted a tripledouble in her first collegiate game, notching 12 points, 12 rebounds and a schoolrecord tying 10 blocks in a victory over Alabama State, and was named SEC Freshman of the Week. Since then, she’s recorded two more doubledoubles for the unbeaten Gamecocks.
Boston will get a chance to play against UConn when the Huskies visit Colonial Life Arena Feb. 10.