ROSEMONT, Ill. — When athletic director Steve Downing walked into the gym at Marian University, he’d just sit back and chuckle watching Knights women’s basketball practices.
“He’d literally just come in and cross his legs and hear me screaming and bright red and spit coming out my mouth,” Purdue women’s basketball coach Katie Gearlds recalled.
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Watching Gearlds, Downing could reminisce on his playing days at Indiana University for another fiery coach, hall of famer Bob Knight.
Gearlds’ tenacity trickled down to the Marian players she led to back-to-back NAIA Division II national championships and a 227-49 record over eight seasons.
Now, though, Gearlds has coached consecutive losing seasons, the only two in her 12 years as a college head coach. Purdue is coming off its third worst season, going 10-19 a year ago.
“I do think a team morphs into and takes on the personality of their head coach,” said Indiana coach Teri Moren who, like Gearlds, is a former player for the Boilermakers. “That being said, the key to all of that is finding players that want to morph into having the personality of that coach. Sometimes that can take time.
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“That’s where I think Katie is, has been for the last several years. It’s finding those kids that fit Purdue, fit her, fit her program and then going out and recruiting them like crazy in hopes they want to come and play for her.”
After the third lowest winning percentage and win total in program history, Purdue lost five players who transferred elsewhere and another who had to medically retire. Gearlds took none of it personally. In this era of college sports, you can’t.
Instead Gearlds and her staff, losing several pieces of what was expected to be Purdue’s future, revamped the roster using three defining traits: athleticism, length and shooting ability.
Anyone who didn’t have at least two of the three weren’t considered. The ones who met that criteria then got evaluated on intangibles such as toughness, IQ and being a good teammate.
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Enter a fresh start.
Purdue enters the season with 10 new faces, most in the Big Ten.
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Junior McKenna Layden and sophomores Lana McCarthy and Kendall Puryear are the only returnees. And fifth-year guard Madison Layden-Zay, who is one of five players in program history with 1,000 career points and 200 3-pointers, is returning after a year away from basketball.
There’s little resemblance to the team that went 3-15 in the Big Ten last season.
“We just have so many transfers and freshmen that it’s good to not dwell on the past,” Layden-Zay said. “Everybody’s ready for a fresh start. Even me. Just ready for a fresh start and to just win.”
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This roster, unlike some others in recent history, has those Gearlds traits. Three freshmen, a returning Layden-Zay and six transfers make up a roster Layden-Zay said resembles Purdue’s most recent NCAA tournament team in 2023.
“All of our transfers came here with the intention to win and build something special,” McCarthy said.
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Whether Purdue does that or not will be told over the next six months.
But one thing is certain.
This team has the identity of its coach.
“We have a lot of competitors,” Layden-Zay said. “We have a lot of people on this team that will do anything to win. I feel like that’s how coach Gearlds coaches.”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How Katie Gearlds rebuilt Purdue women’s basketball roster, fresh start
