Feb. 28, 2007

NEW ORLEANS - Tulane women's basketball head coach Lisa Stockton was named the 2006-07 Conference USA Coach of the Year after guiding the Green Wave to a 24-5 overall record, a school record for wins in the regular season, and the number one overall seed in the Conference USA tournament.

In her 13th season at Tulane, C-USA's winningest coach has was a 264-125 record entering the Conference USA Tournament -- including a 114-66 Conference USA mark all time. Her lifetime record of 327-152 in 16 seasons as a head coach is good for a winning percentage of 74.5 percent.

This season, she guided Tulane to a 24-5 overall record, entering the C-USA Tourney, the first outright C-USA regular season title in school history and the number one overall seed in the C-USA tournament.

"This is a team award and a staff award," Stockton said Wednesday following the announcement. "I'm grateful for this honor, there are a lot of great coaches in this league. But I give all the credit to what our team and my staff has accomplished this year."

Her teams have made nine NCAA Tournament appearances (1995-2003). She guided the Green Wave to C-USA regular season titles during the 1996-97, 1998-99 and now 2006-07 seasons, and won C-USA Tournament crowns in 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2001.

With 264 wins at Tulane, Stockton has more wins than the previous five Green Wave coaches earned in 19 years.

Five Tulane players have gone on to play in the WNBA, while every student-athlete to play all four years with the Green Wave has completed their degree.

A 1986 graduate of Wake Forest who finished a four-year career as the Demon Deacons' all-time leader in scoring, assists and steals, Stockton began her coaching career at the University of North Carolina before taking her first head coaching job at North Carolina's Greensboro College in 1987. She led Greensboro to three winning seasons before leaving to become the top assistant coach at Georgia Tech, where she spent four seasons.

In 1994-95, she took the reigns of the Tulane program and led her first team to a 19-10 record and the first NCAA appearance in school history while earning Metro Conference Coach of the Year honors.

In 2005-06, she guided the Green Wave through a turbulent season off-the-court as Tulane and New Orleans endured the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Displaced to Lubbock, Texas for the fall semester, her student-athletes attended classes at Texas Tech, practiced in other school's facilities and worked with a limited support structure.

Upon returning to New Orleans, yet still off campus in December, Stockton faced the challenges of preparing a team for play in a city in which the team couldn't even find an open place to get food past 7 p.m.

The Green Wave returned to campus for the start of the spring semester, and Stockton's team rallied with a 9-6 finish, advancing to the quarterfinals of the C-USA Tournament, a triple-overtime loss at host SMU, and a 15-12 overall record.

Calling 2006-07 her most enjoyable and rewarding season as a coach, she guided a team picked sixth in the C-USA pre-season poll to the regular season Conference USA Championship and the number one overall seed in the C-USA Tournament.

Tulane's record for regular season wins this season exceeds the 23 won in the regular season by the 1996-97 and 1999-2000 teams. Those squads each went 23-4 in the regular season and finished 27-5 overall (winning the C-USA Tournament and advancing to the NCAA Tournament Second Round each season).

The Green Wave face the winner of #9 seed Houston and #8 seed Marshall on Friday, in the Conference USA quarterfinals. Live stats, audio and video will be available at TulaneGreenWave.com.