Talk:List of college women's basketball career coaching wins leaders

Update cycle

This article is a bit of a mess, with some stats through 2012 season end, some through 2013 season end, and some through some other date, or simply wrong.

May I request that no one update mid-season. However, if there is some solid reason for an exception, such as a major milestone, can you add a footnote to identify that the date is something other than the date noted at the top of the table?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 15:40, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, to start with, Brian Morehouse's record was broken by G.P. Gromacki at 686 games. 2601:147:4501:37E0:C874:13F8:191E:E57B (talk) 23:18, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Robin Hagen-Smith

The two references associated with Robin Hagen-Smith cite different win totals. Some of the difference may be non-NAIA wins, but that doesn't resolve it all. I accepted the NAIA page as more authoritative, but further research may be warranted.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:07, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Garey Smith

Garey Smith's record may be in some single source, but I did not find it. According to one source, his record was 700–440 when he won his 700th against AIB. According the schedule, that made them 14–6 for the year, they ended the year at 22–7, so the remaining result after win 700 was 8–1, hence cumulative record is 708–441..--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:33, 14 April 2013 (UTC) A cleaner way is to look at the NAIA list which is through last year, and add this year's record.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:52, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Improve appearance

I think the appearance of this article is frankly ugly. I first considered using less garish colors to identify the distinctions between divisions, but now questioning whether Color coding is a right way to go. If no one ever changed divisions, we could simply add a column identifying the division without color coding. There are roughly speaking 14 coaches who have coached in more than one division. However the year count wins losses and percentages are aggregate not separated out by division. We could have a single column that indicates the current division they are in and maybe in*a footnote to indicate those who have coached in multiple divisions.

I think there is value in keeping track of where each coach was a coach in which years, but the table format is awkward especially when it requires multiple lines.

I'm still thinking through how best to improve it and suggestions are welcome. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sphilbrick (talk • contribs) 17:31, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

next steps

My current thinking is to make the format more like the men's article. I plan to add a column which identifies the division. Obviously, this is imperfect as some coaches have coached in multiple divisions. My intended approach is to identify the division most recently associated with the coach. If there are multiple divisions over history, I'll add an asterisk or other character that indicates multiple divisions. The interested reader can click on the teams to see the divisions or can go to the article about the coach.

I note that the column "source" actually serves two functions. In some cases it is a link literally to the source, but in other cases it is a link to the most recent schedule. I see value in both so intend to break it out as two separate columns.

I think the color used to designate both Naismith and women's basketball Hall of Fame is a bit garish. It actually isn't necessary, as there is no member of the Naismith Hall of Fame doesn't in the women's basketball Hall of Fame, so we only need two colors; one for WB HOF only, and one for both Hall of Fames.--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:38, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I made the change

I've made some changes to this article. I think the garish colors in the old article detracted from the appearance. I largely followed the lead of the comparable men's article but not exactly. Following are some issues and my rationale:

• The main point of the color scheme was to identify whether the school was in NCAA Division I, II or III, or NAIA. This is not a highly critical piece of information, and the fact that some coaches have coached in different division levels means we cannot simply identify a coach by division. The complicating factor is that many of the schools have changed divisions over time. Each of the schools are linked, so anyone interested in the division can follow the link to the school where the division is normally identified. If someone has a better solution that doesn't involve the garish colors I'm open to discussion
• My intention was to wiki link to the women's basketball article if one existed. In some cases, one will exist but I missed it in which case I link to the main school article. We can revisit this if necessary.
• I added Garey Smith of Grand View. I don't have the years handy; that will have to be added.
• Prior editors adopted the convention that years should be designated by the second year of the season. For example the 1972–73 year was labeled 1973. I think the more common convention is to refer to that as the 1972–73 year, and in the case of multiple years, the first year should be the year associated with the file in the last year should be the year associated with the spring. We can revisit this if I'm wrong on the most common convention.
• The prior version used three different colors to indicate whether a coach was in the women's basketball Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame in Springfield, or both. Given that there is no coach in just the Springfield Hall of Fame, I saw no need to use three colors and have adopted two colors. Should some coach managed to get into the Springfield Hall of Fame without being inducted into the women's basketball Hall of Fame we can revisit this.
• The prior version used one column labeled "source" to include some references as well as some links to schedules. That's very confusing. I added an additional column. One column contains all the sources, and the column for schedule contains links to the schedules in the case of active coaches as there is no particular need to see the schedule if the coach is not active.
• The link to the schedule for West Virginia State (David Smith) is missing because the schedule is not yet available. It should be soon and added.
• The main table is sortable. I didn't see a particular need to make the list of coaches close to the list also sortable but it's fine if someone wants to. --S Philbrick(Talk) 21:42, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Hatchell wins

It is quite understandable that the IP who made a recent edit would choose to remove the wins and losses from 2015-16, as it is true that Hatchell had medical issues and was not on the sidelines. However, if we decided to remove wins and losses when a coach is not on the sideline, we would have a lot of changes to make. It is not uncommon for a coach to miss a game, perhaps due to personal illness, perhaps due to league or conference sanctions. In most cases, I believe those wins and losses are always credited to the person holding the position of head coach, not the acting head coach for the time of the game. The Hatchell situation is, admittedly, not exactly like those situations. However, I think we should defer to the school and to the NCAA to decide who gets credit. I have, in the past, been in consultation with the NCAA about their rules, usually in connection with vacated wins, but other situations as well. In some cases, we might have a tougher situation, as the NCAA, the school and the conference might not all follow the same rules. (This potentially affects the University of Charleston team, which recently played with the wrong ball. At the moment, I think it is even more complicated than conference versus NCAA versus school, I think the conference is counting the wins as wins for the purpose of historical record, but not counting the wins for the purpose of post-season conference seeding. But I digress.)

Luckily, we do not have dueling rules (although I did not check the conference records) Both the school and the NCAA assigned the 2015-16 results to Hatchell. While I would understand if they did it differently, I don't believe we are in a position to override those institutions.

You can see the NCAA numbers, with a little work. Go to NCAA. You will have to fill in the coach name but eventually you will get to a page that lists her lifetime record as 975-358. While that isn't what we have in the table, note that the NCAA only updates the numbers at the end of each season, so she has 975 through last year and as of today 13 this year for 988, so the table is a bit behind. The official bio also lists 975 wins and is also through last season end.--S Philbrick(Talk) 22:53, 4 February 2017 (UTC)