When Joanna Bernabei-McNamee accepted the women's basketball head coaching position at Boston College, she did so with the desire to build a program. She built winners at previous schools and won a national championship as an assistant coach at Maryland, but the mission of restoring the Eagles to their previous heights required a year-over-year improvement capable of sustaining annual success.
Building a program meant more than just qualifying for the national tournament. Her teams, she knew, would eventually contend for spots among the country's elite if she could recruit the right players while simultaneously developing her existing talent, but she wanted fans to latch onto her firebrand of gritty, blue collar basketball as a rooting influence for the entire Massachusetts community.