There was Iowa State women’s basketball before Bill Fennelly, but it literally wasn’t much to speak of. Lynne Lorenzen once commented that there would be fewer fans at ISU games than when she played six-on-six at Ventura.
Now Fennelly is the dean of Big 12 women’s basketball — and with Bill Snyder’s short retirement, probably the only continuous coaching holdover from the Big Eight. He’s entering his 20th season at ISU. He has three to go before his tenure will cover half of the program’s entire history; his contract runs through 2019. The ISU Athletics Department has written a very nice retrospective about Fennelly’s early years.
He’s led the Cyclones to two Elite Eight berths, five Sweet Sixteens, one regular-season conference championship, and two tournament championships. The attendance at Hilton Coliseum has ranked in the top five for seven years and was second only to Tennessee last season. If there’s a list of “best women’s coaches never to make a Final Four”, Bill Fennelly should be somewhere on it.