Alandt: Felisha Legette-Jack’s return to SU is a step in the right direction

Six months after Felisha Legette-Jack watched her No. 33 rise into the Carrier Dome rafters, SU announced she would become its next women’s basketball head coach.

It was a full-circle moment for Legette-Jack, who attended Nottingham High School and completed her decorated Syracuse playing career in 1989 before returning for seven seasons as an assistant coach after stints at Westhill Senior High School and Boston College. Then she went off to Hofstra, Indiana and Buffalo as a head coach at each stop before accepting the job on Saturday.

This was always the most logical start to a new chapter in Syracuse women’s basketball history, one without head coach Quentin Hillsman or anyone else from his staff. Legette-Jack is coming back to central New York at the perfect time. But she returns to a broken home, one she’s tasked with rebuilding under heightened attention.

Legette-Jack expressed interest in returning to Syracuse just days after Hillsman’s resignation. “I am very interested in that job. It’s not just the university, where I went to school. It’s my home,” Legette-Jack told syracuse.com in August. That immediately piqued the interest of fans and alumni, who promptly began calling for her hiring.

Syracuse opted against it and promoted Vonn Read, who was an associate head coach for nine seasons. SU Athletics said the goal was to maintain roster continuity. They were in brace-for-impact mode anyways with a largely new roster full of transfers save for two freshmen.

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Prior to The Athletic’s investigation into Hillsman’s inappropriate behavior, the Orange were a perennial NCAA Tournament team, smoothly transitioning their dominant Big East era into the Atlantic Coast Conference. This season, they were a lost program, floundering through the season to a sub-.500 record while sitting at the bottom of the ACC. If Syracuse got this hire wrong, it wouldn’t be far fetched to say the team would continue on its fastrack toward mediocrity.

Syracuse got it right, though, and hope — at least some of it — was restored. Hiring Legette-Jack doesn’t completely fix everything.The sting of Hillsman’s behavior might take a few years to repair, and the negative spotlight he shined on the program might take even longer to dim. Still, the move is a massive step in the right direction.

Hillsman is credited with erecting SU’s program and establishing it as one of the most consistent teams on campus. But the end of his story at Syracuse was defined not by raising a championship trophy, but instead for handing in his resignation letter and prompting an external investigation into the program. Legette-Jack has shown that she can succeed on the court and return Syracuse to its success on the court, but in the right way.

In Legette-Jack’s first season at Hofstra, it won eight games. But in her final year, she won 20 and made it to the second round of the WNIT.

At Buffalo, Legette-Jack finished her first season well under .500. But once again, she turned around the program, molding it into a team that frequently contended for Mid-American Conference championships and went as far as the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16.

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Legette-Jack certainly has her work cut out for her, and not just regarding the image of the program. Syracuse enjoyed top ranked recruiting classes over the past few years, but that went away after the investigation.

The Orange only had two freshmen this season but barely played them. Now, one of them, Julianna Walker, is in the transfer portal. Everyone in Syracuse’s starting lineup except Teisha Hyman is graduating or in the transfer portal. Legette-Jack is going to need to explain to recruits why she’s different, and why SU is the right school to attend.

She’s known as someone who personally connects with her players and has a vested interest in them off the court, making her the perfect recruiter to build another top recruiting class.

“She’s very passionate about us owning our womanhood, knowing that we matter as women,” Buffalo forward Summer Hemphill said in November.

That’s where this hire really matters. Syracuse could have grabbed the top assistant coach or the hottest name in the coaching carousel. There are plenty of qualified candidates. But it knew the gravity of hiring Legette-Jack and finding someone who would rebuild the bridge burnt down by Hillsman.

Syracuse needed to locate a candidate outside of the program, someone who had zero ties to Hillsman and the culture he created during his tenure. The team needed a leader and a motivating recruiter who can inspire athletes and return the Orange to national prominence.

SU found a person who they already recognized once last year and tasked her with changing the narrative surrounding Syracuse women’s basketball. SU Director of Athletics John Wildhack needed to select someone who could pull in talented recruits and transfers to reconstruct a relevant roster.

This hire should’ve happened in August, when Syracuse kept a coach who was part of the previous staff instead of starting over with someone new. Syracuse delayed the road toward recovery by eight months but eventually made the right decision to have one of their best players ever lead a program that was headed in the wrong direction.

Anthony Alandt is the digital managing editor at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at alandt@syr.edu or on Twitter @anthonyalandt.