Kara Lawson Announces Her Coaching Staff

Three assistants combine for 46 years experience

When Kara Lawson met with the media after being hired as Duke’s women’s basketball head coach, she said that the most important factor in choosing a staff would be “experience.”

Lawson announced her assistants on Friday, and the three coaches have combined for 46 years of collegiate coaching experience including one NCAA Championship, 17 NCAA Tournament selections and six NCAA Final Four appearances.

“Three of the most important decisions a head coach makes are in hiring assistant coaches,” said Lawson. “The way I approached it was trying to find individually-talented coaches, similar to building a team. I wanted coaches that brought a lot to the table in terms of knowledge of the game, knowledge of recruiting, ability to build relationships and player development. All of these characteristics that you would want in a coach, you want your staff to possess as many of those as possible and be experts in a number of them. You can have individually-talented people, but you must have a group that fits together. You want a group that is balanced and that will play off one another well. I think we achieved that. We’ve got three coaches that are talented enough to run their own programs -- two of them already have – and have great experience recruiting the type of young woman we want at Duke.”

Lawson’s staff will include Beth Cunningham, Winston Gandy and Tia Jackson.

Cunningham has nine years of experience as head coach at VCU. She spent the last eight years as an assistant at Notre Dame.

“Beth’s experience having been a head coach for many years, having been at a top program at Notre Dame, having learned and coached with Muffet McGraw, a Hall of Fame coach, having been at Final Fours, having won a national championship; there is so much she brings to the table for Duke. I think that her experience will be helpful for me in a lot of ways.”

“I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to work with Kara at Duke,” said Cunningham. “She is a winner in every sense of the word. Kara has proven that with everything that she has done. It is just a perfect fit and I am looking forward to the challenge.”

Gandy arrives from the Rice coaching staff, where he spent the last three seasons.

“Winston is a rising star in the profession,” said Lawson. “He’s one of the finest player development coaches in the country; that’s one of his superpowers. Winston is also a very well-rounded coach. He’s coming from academically intense institution as well. So, he understands the type of kids we want to recruit -- kids that have big dreams; kids that want to impact the world in a lot of ways and he’s got a great feel for that. He’s also really, really good at building relationships and really, really good in terms of Xs and Os.”

Jackson has 24 years of coaching experience, including four as coach of Washington. She was a Duke assistant from 2005 to 2007 and most recently spent five seasons as an assistant at Miami.

“Tia is coming back to Durham, and we are clearly excited,” said Lawson. “She was a part of two of the most successful seasons in Duke history. She spent time at Stanford, she understands what the process is like in terms of recruiting kids that are high achievers in more than one facet of their lives. And that’s what we have at Duke; we have kids who want to be great students and we have kids who want to be great basketball players. Tia has so much experience and she’s great at building relationships. She’s somebody who I’m going to lean on a lot this year to help me with decisions.”

“There are not many times in college athletics that you get a chance to return to a place that has been really unique and rewarding, especially for me,” said Jackson. “I am beyond enthusiastic about coming back to Duke. It has been a place that I have held very near and dear to my heart over the years. To have this second coming and be under the leadership of Kara is even more gratifying. I am ecstatic.”