Sports360AZ
By Jeff Metcalfe
On the surface, Stephanie Norman leaving Louisville women’s basketball for anything less than a head coaching job seems ludicrous.
Norman is among the most successful associate head coaches in the nation, in the conversation with Chris Dailey (Connecticut), Lisa Boyer (South Carolina) and Bob Starkey (LSU). She’s been with Louisville head coach Jeff Walz since 2007, elevating the Cardinals to four NCAA Final Four, eight Elite Eight and 12 Sweet 16 appearances and an average 27 wins over 18 seasons.
But in 1989 after graduating from Arizona State, Norman remembers driving back to her native Oregon in a Nissan pickup and thinking maybe someday she would return.
That someday began Thursday when Norman, three days after turning 59, was officially named ASU women’s basketball associate head coach/director of basketball strategy. It’s as consequential as a staff hiring could be for first-year Sun Devil head coach Molly Miller.
“It’s really a full-circle moment for me, to be able to finish where I started,” Norman said. “I don’t know any other way but winning. I know what excellence looks like. I know we need to have a standard and not just goals to achieve.
“When I saw and listened to what Molly had done and her energy and I knew her work ethic, I jumped in with both feet and haven’t looked back. She’s very passionate about what she wants to accomplish. For me, this is a labor of love because I want to revitalize this program into its rightful place. It sort of will be my swan song on how I leave this business.”
Norman figured her one chance to coach at ASU was lost three years ago when she was interviewed but lost out on the chance to replace Chari Turner Thorne, who retired in 2022 after 25 seasons. Miller also wanted the ASU job then, but it went instead to Natasha Adair, fired after three 20-loss seasons (29-62 overall).
When ASU hired Miller in March, after a 32-3 NCAA Tournament season at Grand Canyon, she received a congratulatory text from Norman. That led to several phone calls and a job offer so attractive that Walz told Norman “if you don’t take this job, I’m going to fire you. He understood the possibilities for me. That’s the bond we have.”
Miller’s persistent pitch to Norman centered on “pulling at her heart strings” about ASU and her vision.
“I spoke to her about where I wanted this program to go and that I needed people like around me to accomplish those goals,” Miller said. “I wasn’t shy that I not only wanted her but needed her.”
Miller also talked to Walz to assure him that Norman would be highly valued and integral “at a place where she could experience a new challenge.”
Oddly enough for someone now with 35 years of coaching experience, Norman never intended for that to be her profession. She graduated from ASU with a degree in wildlife biology then cut short a summer 1991 backpacking trip with teammates in Europe to accept a graduate assistant coaching opportunity at Hawaii.
“I knew I needed a graduate degree, and that’s the only route I could get my master’s paid for,” Norman said.
The coaching offers kept coming, forcing plan A to work as a Forest Service biologist as the path not taken.
Norman, from Florence, Ore., worked for Elwin Heiny then Jody Runge at Oregon through 1999, for Judy Spoelstra at Oregon State through 2002 and for Melanie Balcomb at Vanderbilt through spring 2007 before the start of her lengthy tenure with Walz at Louisville.
Mitch Barnhart was Oregon State athletic director from 1998-2002 and wanted to hire Norman as Kentucky head coach in 2007, just a week after she accepted Walz’ offer. “It’s part of who I am,” she said. “If I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to do something. So I said no, I’m going to stay at Louisville, I really think Jeff and I can get this place going and on the map.”
In just their second season together (2008-09), Louisville reached the NCAA championship game, losing to undefeated Connecticut then with Maya Moore and Tina Charles.
ASU reached the NCAA Elite Eight twice under Turner Thorne, most recently in 2009. The challenge for Miller, Norman, Jason Glover (formerly on Miller’s GCU staff) and Daniel Barber (most recently at Penn State) will be to get that far or further coming through the Big 12, which had seven NCAA qualifiers this year.
Louisville, under Tom Collen who left for Arkansas, was in a much stronger position when Walz entered than ASU is today. But Norman has coached more than 30 teams that reached postseason play and expects ASU to be back at that level for the first time since 2019 faster than might seem realistic to some.
“Losing is not something I’ve done so I don’t even know what that looks like,” Norman said. “We are going to win. At what capacity, I don’t know. It’s not like we can snap our fingers and all of a sudden put out a Final Four team. It takes some time to build. I know we’re going to do it the right way. I know the passion that’s going to accompany that, and the personal stories I can offer to fans, boosters, alumni.”
Norman, than under her family name Osburn, played at ASU for Juliene Simpson (three years) and Maura McHugh, a span when the Sun Devils had just one winning season. But like other current ASU alum coaches, her pride being back runs deep or else she wouldn’t have left a now blue blood like Louisville.
She still can feel her player exhaustion riding a beach cruiser bike home from a track workout that necessitated stopping to rest at a bank next to a water fountain.
“You remember those moments of sheer exhaustion and what you tried to do to elevate it,” Norman said. “There’s another level to it when you’re an alum. You are not going to let it fail. There’s just not going to be any other option. Women’s basketball is going to matter here. I’m staking my career on it.”
