Recruiting is often referred to as an inexact science. But when Courtney Banghart got to North Carolina in late April 2019 after being named the program’s fourth-ever coach, her recruiting strategy could be described less as science and more as an illusion. She knew she was asking players to believe in something they couldn’t yet see, and possibly more challenging, asking them to believe in someone who hadn’t yet done what she was saying she would.
Banghart wasn’t the most obvious magician for turning around a once-proud and potential-filled program. She had never coached a power conference team, neither as head coach nor as an assistant. She hadn’t played in the WNBA or at the power-conference level. She had never even offered a full-ride scholarship to an athlete. She had spent her career in the Ivy League: the previous 12 seasons as head coach at Princeton, leading the Tigers to the tournament eight times (winning one game), and before that, four seasons as an assistant at Dartmouth, her alma mater.
The Tar Heels program she inherited had been in a consistent decline for the previous decade, missing the NCAA Tournament in three of the four seasons before Banghart was hired. The previous coach, Sylvia Hatchell, resigned after more than 30 seasons when the university…
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