Women’s basketball coach Jennifer Kroll has
NCAA tournament experience.
Kroll, in her second year as Saint women’s
basketball coach, played in two NCAA tournaments and was part of
the 1990 Big Ten Championship as a member of the Division I teams
at Northwestern. Now she is building a team to get the NCAA experience
as a coach.
She came within 20 minutes of her first NCAA Division III tournament
bid as a coach last season as her first St. Lawrence team led William
Smith 34-32 at the half of the 2005 Liberty League Tournament championship
game with the winner gaining the league’s automatic NCAA berth.
While William Smith went on to win that game and the trip to the
NCAA tournament, Kroll’s team gained valuable big-game experience.
That experience is something that Kroll hopes will bring her team
a Liberty League title and that NCAA bid in 2006.
The Saint coach has had considerable success in each of her first
two head coaching positions. She was the coach at Ithaca College
for a season and led the Bombers to a 21-7 record and NYSWCAA and
ECAC titles. She then took over at the University of Chicago for
four seasons and produced one of the most successful seasons in that
team’s history.
St. Lawrence’s recent tradition of NCAA success, which includes
a 2002 NCAA Division III championship game appearance and a string
of five straight NCAA tourney berths, gives Kroll a solid tradition
to build on. And, as her team heads into the start of league competition
in January, the road to the NCAA tourney begins.
