BACKGROUND
Northwest Central Illinois State University is located in the hamlet of Swanberg, Illinois near the border of Iowa and Illinois. The women's basketball program began there in 1970 and has been uncharacteristically successful for the tiny state university known largely for its agriculture programs and for creating the "most police offers per capita of any school in Illinois," according to its program literature.
Despite this, the school has an unfortunate name and is looking to rebrand. You'll eventually help with this process this season. But what we're really here for is to talk women's basketball.
Yes, women's basketball.
Jay White (muns) has just taken over as the 9th head coach in the history of the program. One notable thing about the Governors (that's the mascot) women's basketball program is their coaches have gone on to do big things at other schools. Nearly half of the former head coaches are still head coaches are "more prestigious" programs.
After three years at Rocky Mount State where they had an extremely unlikely run to the NCAA title three years ago, White left to become an assistant at Pac-12 program Washington for two years before finally get the reins of his own program. Most told him that NWCI is a good place to start your career. The program is well supported and the team dominates the Central West Athletic Association which doesn't have a bid to the NCAAs, but were able to qualify for the post-season the past few years without it.
Well, after last season the CWAA and the East Coast Athletic Association agreed to merge (sans SIU-Edwardsville which joined the Horizon League) to form the Trans-Continental Conference, which will be a 16-team league of two divisions. It'll make the road to the NCAAs harder for NWCI to make the post-season, but that's the price of business.
I will be taking over as recruiting coordinator for the Governors under Coach White, as
Kim Harris where I will build a resume to eventually take over my own program. During each post-season, we'll do our own version of FOFC's Top Gun, where we pick our own tournament teams and try to outgun each other to pick the best players in the game who manage to go the furthest. Ideally, Coach White will get better gigs and so will I.