Wisconsin has tabbed its next women’s basketball coach and, for the first time in the programs’ 43-year history, the Badgers will be led next season by a male head coach, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
Jonathan Tsipis is expected to named the seventh coach to lead the women’s basketball team later this week.
Tsipis was most recently the head coach at George Washington University, where he led the Colonials to a 92-38 record and two NCAA Tournament berths in four seasons in the nation's capital.
Tsipis was tasked with re-establishing the Colonials as a national power in April 2012 and, four years later, he will leave the Colonials having accomplished that goal.
He was voted the Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year in 2015 and set program records for wins and winning percentage during his time in Washington D.C. Tsipis led the Colonials to two consecutive A10 Championships in 2015 and 2016, turning around a floundering program which had not made the NCAA Tournament since 2008.
The Wisconsin Athletic Department hopes he is able to spur immediate success in Madison as well, as former head coach Bobbie Kelsey failed to elevate UW to a national power, finishing with a 47-100 record in five seasons.
Prior to his time in Washington D.C., Tsipis was a top assistant at Notre Dame for nine seasons where he also held the dual role as recruiting coordinator.
He began his coaching career in men’s basketball as a graduate assistant for Duke University in 1995-’96. He later had stints coaching at Cornell University, Le Moyne College and Elon University before joining the Fighting Irish and women’s college basketball as a whole.
Tsipis notably will become the first man to coach the women’s basketball team at UW.
Wisconsin, according to the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sports most recent study, titled “Head Coaches of Women’s Collegiate Teams,” was assigned a “C” grade for having five female and seven male coaches as of fall 2015.
The Big Ten Conference previously had the second-highest female coach percentage of the seven major conferences studied, but the addition of a male coach to UW’s athletics department will of course affect the aforementioned statistics.
In women’s college basketball, of the 84 schools studied, George Washington and the Atlantic 10 not included, 64 percent of schools had female head coaches compared to 31 percent of jobs which were held by males.
Additionally, while the hiring of a male coach is groundbreaking at Wisconsin, last season according to the Tucker Center, 53.9 percent of the time a coach was fired in women’s college athletics, a male was hired.
The Executive Committee of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will hold a teleconference Tuesday to approve Tsipis’ contract, per the State Journal.
Update: March 28, 8:33 p.m.: Per a George Washington University release, Jonathan Tsipis has officially resigned as head coach of the school’s women’s basketball team. He was under contract through the 2020-'21 season. GW Director of Athletics and recreation Patrick Nero thanked Tsipis for his time with the Colonials.
“Over the last four years, Jonathan has restored the outstanding tradition of GW women’s basketball,” Nero said in the release. "We’re grateful to him, his staff and the student-athletes he coached for brining the program back to the top of the Atlantic 10 and into the national picture. As we wish Jonathan luck, we also look forward to the next chapter of excellence at GW.”
Editor's Note: An earlier version of the story was updated to reflect the fact that Kelsey coached at UW for five seasons.
