A month after Stephanie White left the Connecticut Solar for the head-coaching gig with the Indiana Fever, her former workforce has named her successor.
The Solar on Wednesday introduced the hiring of Rachid Meziane to be the workforce’s subsequent head coach.
The information comes in the future after Connecticut promoted Morgan Tuck to normal supervisor instead of Darius Taylor, who’s now the workforce’s chief basketball strategist and director of scouting.
Meziane, 44, has almost twenty years of teaching expertise. He’s presently the pinnacle coach of French basketball membership, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, and lately coached the Belgian ladies’s nationwide workforce to a fourth-place end within the 2024 Olympic Video games in Paris.
In a press release, Tuck lauded Meziane for his “wealth of expertise, ardour, and a confirmed monitor document of success that can assist elevate our gamers and workforce as an entire.
“Rachid’s dedication and dedication to rising ladies’s basketball, internationally and domestically, brings a novel perspective each on and off the courtroom that aligns with the values and imaginative and prescient of our group,” Tuck mentioned. “We look ahead to the longer term beneath Rachid’s management and are excited for the constructive impression he may have on our workforce and group.”
Final season, Meziane led Villeneuve d’Ascq to a Ligue Female de Basketball Championship. Through the six-game run, Villenueve d’Ascq beat its opponents by a mean of 17.7 factors. Meziane’s workforce additionally completed as a runner-up in Euroleague final season with a 19-3 regular-season document.
Meziane will inherit a Solar workforce that would look very completely different from 2024.
Final season, Connecticut went 28-12 earlier than being bounced within the WNBA semifinals by the Minnesota Lynx. White beforehand expressed considerations that the Solar’s championship window could also be closing as a number of key contributors, together with Alyssa Thomas, DeWanna Bonner and Brionna Jones are set to hit the free-agency market this offseason.
It was extensively believed White can be a high candidate for head-coaching vacancies this offseason, regardless of nonetheless being beneath contract with the Solar. She left Connecticut final month to take the identical job at Indiana.
Whereas the Solar’s future is in flux, the Fever have a generational expertise in 2024 WNBA Rookie of the Yr Caitlin Clark to construct round, providing a transparent path to success.
The Fever went 20-20 final season beneath Christie Sides, who was fired this offseason to make means for White after two years on the helm.
