Carla Berube still remembers the comment from legendary UConn coach Geno Auriemma.
You couldn’t guard a chair.
It was her freshman year with the Huskies in 1993-94. The remark has stuck with her all these years.
“That really inspired me to get better and really embrace that side of the basketball,” Berube said. “And now I love it and I think that’s how you win championships.”
A year later, Berube helped UConn win its first of 12 NCAA national championships. Nearly a decade later, she became a head coach at Division III Tufts University. In 2019, she made the jump to Division I to lead a Princeton women’s basketball program that has become an Ivy League powerhouse.
Now, Berube embarks on her newest challenge as the coach at Northwestern. She takes over for Joe McKeown, who retired after 18 seasons at Northwestern and 40 seasons as a Division I coach — including stints at New Mexico State and George Washington.
Northwestern athletic director Mark Jackson introduced Berube as the program’s next head coach at a news conference Tuesday at Welsh-Ryan Arena, calling her a “fierce, relentless competitor.”
Berube inherits a program that reached the NCAA Tournament twice under McKeown — and certainly would’ve added a third appearance if the 2020 tournament hadn’t been canceled — but has struggled through four consecutive losing seasons.
McKeown announced his decision to retire a year ago before coaching through the 2025-26 season. That gave Jackson and the athletic department ample time to consider what to prioritize in a new coach.
“Beyond the culture and the commitment to our mission, we wanted a winner, a proven winner with established NCAA Tournament success in bringing us back to where we belong, competing for a Big Ten championship,” Jackson said.
Burube has seen winning.
In seven years leading the Princeton program, her teams went 147-29 with five consecutive NCAA tournament appearances and two trips to the second round. Her teams won the Ivy League regular-season title five times, including in 2019-20 when the postseason was canceled due to COVID-19. The Ivy League also canceled the 2020-21 season. Prior to Princeton, her teams at Division III Tufts went 384-96 during 17 seasons.
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“I love to win and I’m lucky enough to be doing that a lot, so I think we can do it here,” Berube said.
All that winning made Berube a popular name in the coaching carousel in recent years. She had the Princeton program poised to compete for NCAA Tournament appearances year after year.
So why was now the right time to make the jump to a program in a major conference?
“It more so was about the place,” Berube said. “I wasn’t leaving Princeton for a place I didn’t believe in and that my values weren’t aligned with. And that’s when Northwestern came to light and (I) had really great conversations with Mark. It just felt right and it felt like the right time.”
For Northwestern, one of two private schools in the Big Ten, Berube’s proven ability to win at a place with high academic standards must have been appealing.
But the Ivy League and the Big Ten are two different environments in the ever-changing landscape of Division I athletics. The transfer portal likely will have to play a major role in Berube’s roster-building efforts in the Big Ten. That wasn’t the case in the Ivy League.
Jackson said Berube’s willingness to embrace a challenge was perhaps the most important quality he saw in her.
“We’re not shying away from all the industry changes that are in front of us now, and we know what those are,” Jackson said, alluding to the transfer portal and NIL. “But we wanted somebody that could understand being at an elite academic institution.”
It will be a major rebuild for a Northwestern program that went 8-21 last season and 2-16 in Big Ten play.
Berube already hired longtime Princeton assistant Lauren Dillon to be her associate head coach at Northwestern. She will also be taking inspiration from within the athletic department. Berube’s excited to work alongside field hockey coach Tracey Fuchs and lacrosse coach Kelly Amonte Hiller, both of whom have won multiple national titles.
Berube said she plans on picking their brains about winning at the highest level and doing it at Northwestern. Jackson noted that Fuchs gave the Berube hire “three thumbs up.”
There will be much work to do, but asked point-blank if she thinks her team can compete for a spot in the NCAA tournament next season, Berube responded with an emphatic, “Yes.”
“You will see that we will compete for every single second on this court,” she said as she spoke at a podium atop the court at Welsh-Ryan Arena. “It’s going to be hard-nosed, toughness, grittiness, just competing every single possession to win that possession on both ends of the floor. I think you’ve got to bring that every single day.”