What is UConn women’s basketball head coach Geno Auriemma looking for in his next assistant coach?

Fans found out Tuesday when the job posting went up on UConn’s human resources website – a legal requirement.

Jamelle Elliott, a longtime assistant to Auriemma, announced her resignation last week, saying she was looking for her next opportunity. Given her level of experience, it’s going to take someone with an impressive career to replace her.

The athletic department clearly is looking to make a quick hire, with the application period closing just before midnight Eastern time on Monday, giving interested candidates just a week to apply.

The minimum qualifications, as stated in the job post:

The preferred qualifications:

What exactly will the next coach be asked to do? These are the “duties and responsibilities” of the next UConn assistant coach, as taken from the job post:

"Assist and support the Head Women’s Basketball Coach in the organization and administration of all phases of a premier Division I program, including practice and game preparation, scouting of opponents, and the evaluation and recruitment of prospective student-athletes; assist in monitoring academic progress and development of student-athletes; and perform other program duties as assigned by the Head Coach."

Entering his 42nd season as head coach at UConn, Auriemma has built a coaching tree. He also must know almost every coach in women's basketball. It would be stunning if he didn’t have an inkling of who could be strong candidates at this point.

Two of his former players, Carla Berube (Northwestern) and Shea Ralph (Vanderbilt) are head coaches of power-conference programs.

Berube left Princeton this spring to move up to the Big Ten, and Ralph is building a program that could make deep runs in the NCAA Tournament as the years go on. Ralph was a UConn assistant from 2008-21. Neither woman is a likely candidate.

And there are other former players with coaching experience who meet the requirements, though no one has said they have interest in the opening.

Perhaps the most intriguing name on this list is Nykesha Sales, who most recently was an assistant at Georgia. In 2016, she went to work on the staff of coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson at UCF, then joined her head coach when she moved on to Georgia in 2022.

On April 4, Georgia and Abrahamson-Henderson parted ways, putting Sales out of a job. Sales, a Connecticut native, won a title in her time at UConn (1994-98) before embarking on an eight-year WNBA career.

Then there is Tamika Williams-Jeter.

Known then as Tamika Williams, she played on two UConn championship teams during her tenure from 1998-2002, followed by seven seasons in the WNBA. Between 2008 and 2021, she served as an assistant coach at Kansas, Kentucky, Penn State and Ohio State before becoming head coach at Division III Wittenberg in Ohio for one season (2021-22).

The following season, she was hired as head coach at Dayton. For an Ohio native who went to high school in Dayton, that job might be her destination.

Jennifer Rizzotti played for UConn in the early to mid-1990s and was part of the first Huskies team to win a national championship in 1995, followed by the 1996 Associated Press Player of the Year award. She won back-to-back WNBA championships in 1999 and 2000 with the Houston Comets. She later spent 17 seasons as the head coach at Hartford followed by five at George Washington with a combined record of 388-290.

Rizzotti is a Connecticut native who currently is the president of the Connecticut Sun of the WNBA. With the team sold and set to move to Houston next season, would she want to return to the city where she starred as a pro player? Or would the UConn job interest her?

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