Jill Pizzotti thought she was retiring from coaching 20 years ago.
Her 10-year stint as a young head coach at Saint Louis University ended in 2005 after a pair of rough seasons, and while she had plenty of assistant coaching job offers, one opportunity in the corporate world stood out.
Nike wanted her to be its manager of women’s college basketball, an “incredible job,” she said.
She moved to Portland, Ore., bought a condo and thought — though she was not yet 40: “Well, you’ve got to give up coaching at some point in your life. I’m just giving it up earlier than you would think.”
But during five years with Nike, Pizzotti found herself observing the practices of some of the greats. Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma, Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer, Oklahoma’s Sherri Coale. The urge to return began to eat at her.
“They always tell you coaching is in your blood,” Pizzotti told the Tribune. “For me, it’s also a way to serve people. So I was missing a lot of that too.”
Pizzotti still had more coaching chapters ahead.
Twenty years after her initial coaching exit, she walked past a line of cheerleaders and rows of family members and colleagues seated on the Wintrust Arena basketball court Tuesday to be introduced for her second head coaching job: replacing DePaul legend Doug Bruno.
During 13 seasons as a DePaul assistant, Pizzotti never really felt like she was chasing another head coaching job, content to work under Bruno and near her family in the Chicago area. But when Bruno was sidelined by a stroke in August, she was simultaneously concerned for her mentor and invigorated when thrust into the interim head coach role this past season.
Now, after Bruno’s retirement, the 58-year-old Pizzotti is determined to carry on his legacy with the Blue Demons as she takes on her next challenge.
“I feel like I’m on a mission to get the program back where Doug wanted to get it back before he chose to retire,” Pizzotti said of a DePaul program that last made the NCAA Tournament in 2022. “That was what we talked about the last few years, like, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get this thing back going.’ So I do feel a responsibility to work hard for Coach Bruno to get us back.”
