Joanna Bernabei-McNamee out as Boston College women’s basketball coach

Key Highlights

• That’s the least number of wins Boston College has had in a single season since joining the ACC in 2005. The 50-year-old native of West Virginia was hired in 2018 to lead the Eagles after Erik Johnson’s resignation.
• Bernabei-McNamee was never able to lead Boston College to the NCAA Tournament. After going 11-7 in ACC play in 2019-20, her second season, Bernabei-McNamee’s Eagles likely would have been included in the March Madness field, but the tournament was canceled due to COVID-19.
• Two years later, Boston College went 21-12 overall and 10-8 in the ACC, but was left on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble as the first team excluded from the field. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThat was the final winning season for Bernabei-McNamee at Boston College.
• Some thought she might try to parlay her success in the 2021-22 season into becoming the head coach at West Virginia — the flagship school in her home state where she had been an assistant — following Mike Carey’s retirement, but she remained at BC. What proved to be difficult for Bernabei-McNamee at Boston College was her ability to retain talented players in the transfer portal era.
• Many of the top players she recruited and developed went on to help other ACC programs.