Shauna Green can’t pinpoint the exact moment she first picked up a basketball, but for as long as she can remember, she has known the sport is her true passion.
A star at Canisius, Green set a program record with 2,012 career points and was a four-time All-Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference selection. She always lived in the present and never thought about coaching — that is, until she could see the end of her playing days on the horizon.
“Going into my late junior year into senior year, I’m like, ‘Oh, shoot, I can’t not have basketball in my life,'” Green said. “That’s all I’ve known since I was a little kid. That’s all I’ve done. It’s my passion, it’s my love.”
That’s when Green started thinking about coaching.
Since then, the 43-year-old has done a lot of winning. After leading Dayton to four NCAA Tournaments in six years, she has Illinois (22-9, 11-7 Big Ten) in the field for the first time since 2003. The Illini received a No. 11 seed Sunday and will face Mississippi State in a First Four game Wednesday in South Bend, Ind. (6 p.m., ESPNU).
Green hit the ground running in Champaign as Illinois emerged as a major surprise in the Big Ten, earning a place in The AP Top 25 for the first time since 2000 after rattling off seven straight wins early in the season, including a victory over Caitlin Clark and Iowa on New Year’s Day.
This comes after Illinois won just seven conference games over the previous five seasons under Nancy Fahey, who was hired in 2017 after winning a record five Division III national championships at Washington University in St. Louis.
The Illini, who reached the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals before losing 74-58 to then-No. 5 Maryland on March 2, aren’t just happy to be in the NCAA Tournament field.
“We didn’t come here to be average and to not compete and not try to do great things,” Green said. “We came here to turn this around and to get people on board that believe in what we’re doing so we can continue to take it to new heights.”
Green never has known a losing season as a Division I head coach. She took over at Illinois with a 156-75 career record, including a 127-50 mark at Dayton. She landed her first head coaching job at Division III Loras before stints as an assistant at Providence, Dayton and Northwestern.
Green shouldn’t get all the credit for the rapid turnaround, which was sparked by an assortment of returning players, transfers and assistant coaches Green brought from her staff at Dayton. But she has brought leadership, a family feel and the desire to win.
Associate head coach Calamity McEntire is in her fifth season working alongside Green. McEntire was an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Dayton from 2017-21, and while it was hard for her to leave the staff at Texas after only one season, it was an easy decision to rejoin Green.
“Shauna’s very genuine and true to who she is and she knows herself well,” McEntire said. “When you know who you are and what you’re about, it’s easy to be yourself every day. She’s very consistent in her approach, she’s very personable and although this is a business, she is a people-first person. Every decision she makes, she’s always thinking of what’s best for our team.”
Puzzle pieces
Hiring a Division I head coach can be likened to a puzzle. It requires the puzzle maker, the pieces and someone to work on it until it’s put together.
It became clear as Illinois went 7-77 in the Big Ten during Fahey’s five seasons that the Division III legend wasn’t on track to solve the puzzle and bring the Illini to their first postseason since a 2013 WNIT berth.
When athletic director Josh Whitman set out to find a coach who could resurrect the long-struggling program, he began with a couple of things in mind.
“We think first about what are the things that we want, and then we identify potential candidates and sort of match them against that profile to see how well they fit some of those characteristics,” Whitman said. “And that’s what we did here. We developed the profile we were looking for in women’s basketball. Very early on, Shauna emerged as an incredibly interesting candidate because she fit essentially everything we were looking for.”
As Whitman initiated his search last March, Green was focused on Dayton’s NCAA Tournament appearance. The Flyers won a First Four game against DePaul in Ames, Iowa, but lost two days later to Georgia.
Whitman was in Pittsburgh at the same time for the Illinois men’s NCAA Tournament opener against Chattanooga. He asked Green if he could visit her house to discuss the job.
“I was not thinking about anything,” Green said. “I was so mad and just focused on our team at Dayton. And I’m like, ‘Well, you can come.'”
It was the second home visit during Green’s recruitment, but this time Whitman drove by himself from Pittsburgh to Dayton. Green explained she’s about people and “the right fit,” so when she talked to Whitman, the more she started to consider taking the job.
“Really, it was Josh,” Green said. “If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have even probably talked further about this position. The more we talked, the more I believed. The more I felt there was a connection. And if you don’t have the right leadership, you’re not going to be successful.”
Another thing Green considered was Whitman’s hiring of Illinois football coach Bret Bielema in December 2020 and men’s basketball coach Brad Underwood in March 2017. Bielema guided the Illini to an 8-5 record last fall in his second season — their first winning season since 2011 — and Underwood delivered a Big Ten Tournament championship in 2021 and a regular-season Big Ten title in 2022.
“That Saturday that Josh came to my house, Brad also called me and I thought that showed a lot too about the people and that family feel,” Green said. “Those are those reasons of like, ‘Hey, the people are right here and this fits me.'”
Not long after, Green’s decision was made. She called Whitman on the Sunday after his visit to accept the job. The next day she told her 8-year-old son, Matteo. Then she left home to share the news with her Flyers team.
“(Dayton) will always be a piece of me and has a place in my heart,” Green said. “I love that place like it’s home. I built certain things, we recruited all those kids. To make that decision, it was probably the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.”
After an emotional and tear-filled day, Green was on a flight that night to her new home in Champaign.
Piecing the team together
Green found great success in the transfer portal with Genesis Bryant coming from North Carolina State and Makira Cook and Brynn Shoup-Hill following Green from Dayton.
Forward Kendall Bostic transferred to Illinois before the 2021-22 season from Michigan State. She already had a relationship with Green, who tried to recruit Bostic out of high school and again when she hit the portal.
When Green was announced as the Illinois coach, it was as if no time had passed between the two.
“She always joked, ‘You told me no twice, but I finally got you,'” Bostic said.
Bostic explained that what makes Green a great coach isn’t just her tactical skills but her ability to cultivate individual relationships with everyone on the team.
“We trust her,” Bostic said. “The returners that stayed, we had full trust in her immediately. We were like, ‘We’ve seen what you can do, we want you to help us win.’ And she got to know us as people before she ever got us on the court.”
Green said she usually has individual meetings with team members every two weeks, give or take during the busy season. It’s a time when Green and a player can talk about everything.
“That’s just me being intentional,” Green said. “Having that time where we can sit down one on one, face to face, and I can check on them as people. … Giving them ownership, too, and giving them a voice is a really critical piece.”
Getting everyone on board
Another important piece to the rebuild is breathing life into the Illini fan base. Green has pushed for more people to attend games since her introductory news conference.
“That was something from day one too,” she said. “I joke about it, but I beg and plead everyone to come out to our games because, you have to have that if you’re going to be a consistent winning program. You have got to have the support.”
The Illini drew 5,583 fans to the State Farm Center for an 83-72 loss to then-No. 6 Indiana on Jan. 18.
Bostic said the difference in attendance from last season is noticeable. It sank in during the Illini’s win over then-No. 12 Iowa in front of an announced crowd of 4,803 on Jan. 1.
“We had people coming in when we were still doing stretches for warmups, and that has never happened before,” Bostic said. “They kept coming and kept coming. The lower bowl was completely full. It was like: ‘This is crazy. These people actually want to watch us play.’
“I would say that was definitely that moment for me that I was like, ‘OK, people care about us now.'”
Regardless of how the Illini fare in the NCAA Tournament, Whitman said the program’s quick rise is already a mark of a successful year.
“I don’t think any of us went into this season expecting big shiny trophies at the end,” Whitman said. “For us, it’s always about process, it’s about progress. That’s another characteristic that you see shared by the most successful coaches. They’re just so laser focused on the moment in front of them.
“It’s not about the results, it’s about each minute of each day that ultimately builds toward something successful, and certainly you see that in Shauna and the way that she goes about her work.”
From acing her staff hires and drawing serious talent in the transfer portal to speaking directly to the crowd after games and hyping up her team by joining in on the latest TikTok trends, Green’s all-encompassing approach has helped Illinois rise back to the surface.
“Everyone wants to be the best, but not many people are willing to put in the process day to day and have their habits meet their dreams,” Green said. “If your habits don’t match that, you can just have all these visions and far-fetched goals. So we really try to just be present and worry about what can we do right now and what can we control in our process, in our action, to be the best that we can be.
“And I truly believe if you do that day after day, moment by moment, then outcomes take care of themselves. That’s what we’re about. That’s what we really try to instill in our players and in our staff, and I think that carries over into life.”
Mariah Guzman is a freelance writer for the baiduhai.