Pat Summitt
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Pat Summitt (born Patricia Sue Head on June 14, 1952 in Clarksville, Tennessee) is the winningest college basketball coach of all time. She is the coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols. She currently finished her 32nd year of coaching, all with the Lady Vols. Her career coaching record with the Lady Vols is 913-177.
As a player at the University of Tennessee-Martin, Summitt was an All American and co-captain of the 1976 Olympic basketball team.
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Coaching milestones
In 2003, Summitt joined a handful of coaches that have claimed 800 or more career victories in NCAA basketball. She became the fastest coach to reach that milestone.
On March 22, 2005, Summitt became the all-time leader for games won among NCAA Division I basketball coaches, men's as well as women's, when her number-one seed Lady Vols defeated ninth-seed Purdue in the second round of the 2005 NCAA women's basketball tournament. It was her 880th win as a coach, breaking North Carolina men's coach Dean Smith's Old record of 879.
On January 19, 2006, she won her 900th game, an 80-68 win over Vanderbilt University.
Tournament record
Summitt has six national championships and 24 Southeastern Conference tournament and regular season titles with the Lady Vols. She has taken her team 16 times to the NCAA Final Four, and she was named SEC coach of the year in 1993, 1995, 1998, 2001, 2003, and 2004. She was named NCAA Coach of the Year in 1983, 1987, 1989, 1994, 1998, and 2004. She was also named the Naismith Coach of the Century. When she made her 13th trip to the Final Four as a coach in 2002, she surpassed John Wooden as the NCAA coach with the most trips to the Final Four.
In the 1997-1998 tournament, her team went undefeated the entire season, winning all 30 regular and 9 tournament games, earning Summitt's fifth championship. Summitt and her team were then the subject of an HBO documentary, and some sportswriters considered that year's team the greatest team ever in college women's basketball.
Summitt took her team to the championship game again in 2004, this time losing 70-61 to the UConn Huskies. The rivalry with UConn is one of the most heated in college sports.
Honors
In 1999, Summitt was inducted with the inaugural class to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2000, she joined Isiah Thomas as inductees into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Summitt is the only person to have two NCAA Division I basketball courts named in her honor: "Pat Head Summitt Court" at the University of Tennessee-Martin, and "The Summitt" at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
She also has a street named after her, "Pat Head Summitt Street," on the University of Tennessee-Knoxville campus.