Rarely does an individual achieve great success as both a player and coach in any sport, as the likes of Wayne Gretzky and Isiah Thomas have demonstrated at the professional level.
Though she was a two-time first team All-American at Tennessee, Ohio coach Semeka Randall has not earned the notoriety at the helm of the Bobcats that she did as a player.
Randall, who is in the fifth and final year of her contract, has won just one-third of her games at Ohio — including less than 30 percent of Mid-American Conference contests.
When she was selected to take control of the Bobcats in May 2008, Randall was endorsed as a great hire by both Ohio Director of Athletics Jim Schaus and former Tennessee coach Pat Summitt, who is the all-time winningest coach in NCAA history.
Randall was not made available to speak on the matter, but spoke earlier this season about playing under Summitt and moving forward into her coaching career.
“There was always a sense of urgency at Tennessee, because there was never a day you felt like you could take off,” Randall said. “We knew we could go out and beat people; we wanted to annihilate them and run the score up, and we went undefeated (in 1998).”
She has been involved with basketball her entire life. As a junior and senior in high school, Randall received Ohio’s Miss Basketball. Following her impressive career at Tennessee, Randall took her talents to the WNBA for four seasons and spent time in Greece and Israel’s professional leagues.
However, through almost five full seasons of being a head coach, Randall has not finished a campaign with a winning record overall or in MAC play, as this year’s Bobcats (6-20, 1-13 MAC) might finish as the worst season under her watch.
Just 10 teams in the 32-year history of MAC women’s basketball have ended a season with less than two conference wins, but the Bobcats will join the club for the first time if they fail to win one of their final three games.
This season has been significantly worse for a number of reasons, but the MAC has proven difficult for Randall throughout her tenure. Since the berth of the conference, 41 coaches have coached more than 100 games, yet only eight have a lower winning percentage than Randall’s.
The Bobcats endured a program-long 11-game losing streak to begin MAC play and five players being inactive because of injury.
With three games remaining, Randall and the Bobcats will attempt to avoid historical futility and turn the page from the disappointment of the 2012-2013 season that it has been for the program.
“We make it seem like the basket is unbelievably tiny, but it’s actually a big rim,” Randall said. “We just need to have confidence that we can step up and knock shots down. I don’t say that to sound sarcastic, it’s the truth of the matter — these players know how to score.”
cl027410@ohiou.edu
