Coach Dave Magarity recited the names on the University of New Hampshire women’s basketball roster with great familiarity, almost as if it was his own roster. Carlie Pogue, Olivia Healy, Brittni Lai, Kat Fogarty, Kristen Anderson.
“I just think they’ve got a special group of kids,” said Magarity, the 11th-year women’s basketball coach at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. “I really feel like they have a chance to be good, I mean, really good.”
There are a few things Magarity— a typical basketball junkie and lifelong coach — has in common with players like Healy, Pogue, Lai and Fogarty. For one, they all share a family member.
“The thing that I loved the most about my dad being a coach while I was growing up was the relationships he had with his players. The team really was my family, too,” UNH women’s basketball coach Maureen Magarity said, remembering the 18 years her father spent coaching the Marist men’s team while she was growing up. “I always say ‘my girls’ and everyone always thinks I’m talking about my daughters. But I’m talking about my team. They’re my girls, too. … To me, that’s what it’s all about, and I really learned that from my dad.”
Some of the sets the Wildcats run, or the drills they do in practice, also are things Maureen learned from Dave, who has led the Cadets to 116 wins and two NCAA Tournament appearances in the last five seasons in what’s considered one of the best stretches in program history.
“He’s been a coach for so many years, so he just has books and books of drills and sets,” Maureen said. “For me, he’s a great wealth of knowledge and a great resource.”
The strategies Maureen uses on the recruiting trail for UNH she learned serving as an associate head coach and an assistant under her father at West Point for four years.
“Recruiting is really challenging there. … You have to talk to these parents about after West Point, these kids have a five-year commitment in a time of war. That was really tough,” Maureen said. “Recruiting was the toughest piece, but it was also the most rewarding. To take over here at UNH, it’s a little bit of an easier sell in some ways.”
At the end of the day, both coaches know that talented players like Pogue, Healy, Fogarty and Lai are the reason the Wildcats (22-4 after Wednesday’s 65-57 win over Maine) are off to their best start in program history, adding another win Thursday, 66-47 over Vermont. But the Magaritys at least had a hand in getting UNH to its first 20-win season since 1984.
Growing up in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., it didn’t take Maureen long to figure out that she wanted to be a basketball coach when she got older, just like her dad.
“I just had a funny childhood being a coach’s kid. It’s the only thing I knew, to be honest with you,” she said. “So, honestly, it sounds crazy but I swear when I was in like middle school, that’s what I wanted to do. I guess I was just a weird kid in that way but I loved it.”
Maureen eventually went on to play basketball at Boston College for a year before transferring to Marist, which is in Poughkeepsie. She was a two-time second-team All-Conference selection for the Red Foxes and led Marist to its first NCAA Tournament appearance in 2004 as a team captain.
Maureen spent a year on the coaching staffs at Marist and Fairfield after graduation before joining her dad on the bench at West Point in 2006.
After coaching the men’s team at Marist for 18 years, Dave went into an administrative role in two athletic conferences before getting back on the sidelines in 2005 at West Point, which is just 31 miles from Poughkeepsie. He was hired as Army’s associate head coach under Maggie Dixon, the younger sister of TCU Coach Jamie Dixon, who is best known for the 13 years he spent as head coach of the Pittsburgh men’s basketball team.
Maggie Dixon died suddenly in 2006 and Dave, who had recently accepted a front-office role with the NBA’s New Orleans Hornets, was asked to replace Dixon at Army instead.
“It was a horrible story. It was just a horrific time. So emotional here,” Dave said. “Quite frankly, I just didn’t know if I was the right person to take the job.”
It turns out he was the perfect person for the job. He immediately led Army to a 24-6 record that next year and he became the first coach in the Academy’s Division I history to record multiple 20-win seasons with a 22-9 record in 2012-13.
Dave’s connection to the Dixons also played a role in eventually leading Maureen to the sideline at UNH. Tom Herrion, a longtime assistant of Jamie Dixon, is the brother of UNH men’s basketball coach Bill Herrion.
“When (Tom Herrion) finds out UNH is looking for a women’s coach, he calls and says, ‘You need to talk to this young lady at West Point,’ because he had gotten to know Maureen over the years. So you talk about a small world,” Dave said. “It was just the perfect fit for her.”
At 29, Maureen became the youngest head coach in Division I, taking over the Wildcats in 2010 for Kristin Cole.
UNH’s 12-18 record last season was not part of the plan.
“Last year was just a really tough year,” Maureen said. “It was just one of those crazy years that we learned a lot from and I think the girls really got hungry. They knew how good we could be if we just put a few things in place.”
UNH proved that almost instantly this year. After dropping two of their first three games, the Wildcats rattled off 18 wins in 19 games and put together a program-record 13-game win streak that stretched from Dec. 18 to Feb. 6.
When it finally ended with a conference loss to second-place Albany earlier this week, Maureen admitted that she wasn’t sure exactly what to expect once the game ended. But once she walked into the locker room, she was relieved by what she saw.
“We hadn’t lost since Dec. 11, that’s a really long time. So I’m thinking to myself how are they going to react? Are they going to be upset or crying? Or are they going to be acting like nothing really changed? I was actually happy to see that they just looked really angry,” she said with a laugh. “They knew we didn’t play well. We didn’t come out, we didn’t execute and it kind of felt like one slipped away. … You could tell they just wanted to get back to work.”
The Wildcats are less interested in chasing history or becoming the first women’s team at UNH to make it to the NCAA Tournament. The focus is on finishing the season where they are now: At the top of the America East standings.
“We had a goal in the beginning of the season to win the conference. That was our main goal so whatever we have to do to get there is what we are going to do,” junior guard Brittni Lai said.
Junior forward Kat Fogarty added: “It’s hard to think about (NCAAs) right now because we have a long way to go. We have to get better still. Yes, it would be a great accomplishment, but it’s not something that we talk about right now.”
Fogarty and Lai both transferred from Marist, Maureen’s alma mater, two years ago. After sitting out a year, they’re among a handful of newcomers contributing for the Wildcats this season.
“Three of our five starters are newcomers and they’ve made an immediate impact,” Maureen said. “We’re much more balanced. This year, we have so many different weapons. I think it’s tough for opponents to scout us because we have so many different people who can step up.”
Last season, Elizabeth Belanger led the Wildcats in scoring 18 times. This year, Pogue has been the leading scorer 10 times, while Fogarty has led the team six times and Lai five.
There’s only one senior on the roster in Kristen Anderson. But because of Division I transfer rules, Fogarty, Lai and Olivia Healy are all seniors academically and juniors on the roster.
“I think that helps us because we know that we are never counted out. I think when you have a young team, if you start getting down in the second half, it’s harder to come back, it’s harder to stay composed because you haven’t been there before,” Fogarty said. “A lot of us have been here before.”
One place no UNH team has ever been is the America East tournament championship game. In fact, the last regular-season title for the Wildcats came in the 1984-85 season when they were in the Seaboard Conference, an America East forerunner.
“I think right now, we’re just really focusing on finding a way to finish in first place and win a regular-season title. That’s something we talk about every day. We do that and then at least we can control our own destiny,” Maureen said, sounding just like the daughter of a coach.
That’s exactly what she is, after all, but now she’s got a team of her own.