Temple women’s basketball has big plans under Diane Richardson despite outside expectations

Since Arthur Johnson was hired as Temple’s athletic director a little more than a year ago, he has shaken up Temple’s coaching landscape. Johnson fired women’s basketball coach Tonya Cardoza — the all-time winningest coach in program history — and football coach Rod Carey, and didn’t renew volleyball coach Bakeer Ganesharatnam’s contract all in his first year on the job.

More changes could be on the way with Brian Rowland and Nick Bochette’s men’s and women’s soccer teams becoming stepping stools in the American Athletic Conference.

As part of the new wave of Temple coaches, Diane Richardson was hired as head women’s basketball coach in April. While she’s new to North Broad, Richardson doesn’t want to rebuild. Instead, she wants to find immediate success and to reinvigorate the fanbase in North Philly.

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That starts with looking the part. It was announced in the spring that Richardson would be moving her team’s games from Pearson-McGonigle Hall to The Liacouras Center — where the men’s team has played since 1997 and the women haven’t played since the Dawn Staley era — this season.

“We want to feel like a big-league team,” Richardson said. “We expect to feel like a big-time team and the Liacouras Center does that. I don’t know why they played at McGonigle before, but that’s just not what I want for my young ladies.”

Reaching that goal will be an uphill battle for Richardson as she inherited a team that went 13-15, including 8-8 in conference play in 2021-22. Not only that, but she inherited a roster that had only six players. With that, Coach Rich — as she’s affectionately known as — had to dig into the transfer portal.

She, like many coaches around the country, had her concerns about the portal two years ago. However, with Temple having just one freshman recruit joining the team, Richardson had no choice but to utilize the controversial entity.

“I didn’t think it was a good idea at all,” Richardson said. “Players, if they’re not satisfied with what they’re getting — even though they may not be putting it all in — they go into the portal and want to go to the next. And I thought that’s just not going to work.”

To minimize the room for error, Richardson started where she was most familiar. Prior to accepting the Temple job, Richardson spent five years at Towson, where she led the Tigers to an 80-66 overall record, a WNIT appearance and an NCAA Tournament appearance.

Of the seven transfers Richardson brought to Temple, three came from Towson, with guards Aleah Nelson and Tarriyonna Gary and forward Rayne Tucker joining the Owls.

Nelson was a first-team All-Colonial Athletic Association selection last season. Gary led Towson in three-point shooting at 36.3%, and Tucker, an interior force, was twice nominated to the All-CAA team.

“They were head and shoulders above a lot of the players in the CAA,” Richardson said. “Moving up to Temple, it’s a big step … and all of them have shown that they could step up in big games when we were there at Towson.”

For the players, while proving they belong in the AAC and at Temple is a priority, they care more about team success and facilitating Richardson’s message.

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Nelson, who started her career at Cincinnati, already has familiarity with the conference and knows what to expect in 2022-23. Gary, who has only ever played at Towson for Richardson, is ready to play at the next level.

“[The American] is higher than the CAA, but I think we’re all ready for the challenge,” Gary said. “Everybody here has a winning mentality. We’re all competitive.”

While last year’s team would get stagnant watching Mia Davis — Temple’s all-time leading scorer — operate on the court, Nelson plans to make sure this team executes Richardson’s equal-opportunity offense. Nelson averaged 5.3 assists and was tied for 26th in the country last season.

As the most accomplished player on the roster, Nelson also knows it’s up to her to help Temple exceed the seventh-place expectations that were placed upon them in the conference’s preseason coaches poll.

“I’m not surprised that we were picked seventh,” Nelson said. “It’s just they’re underestimating us, so it does add to our fire. It does put a little chip on our shoulder. … They’re in for a rude awakening.”