St. Ambrose Legends Retire - St. Ambrose University

Bluder begat Robin Becker Pingeton ’90, who begat
Tasha McDowell ’98.
When the 2011–12 season began, they collectively
helmed three of the 338 Division I women’s basketball
programs around the country: Bluder at Big Ten Iowa,
Pingeton at Big 12 Missouri and McDowell at Western
Michigan of the Mid-American Conference.
Add Iowa State’s Bill Fennelly, a Davenport native
who assisted St. Ambrose women’s coach Bob Duax as
a college freshman in 1976, and you could have fielded a
Final Four filled with big-time coaches with a Queen Bee
pedigree.
“It’s kind of cool to think about it that way,” Bluder
said. “There has been a good group that has gone
through there, that’s for sure.”
If the SAU coaching pipeline isn’t quite unprecedented
among small college programs, it is exceedingly rare.
Bluder can recall only one comparable situation, but
it is a doozy. Immaculata University in Pennsylvania has
ties to three coaches who advanced to Division I Final
Fours.
“That’s pretty impressive,” Bluder said.
St. Ambrose needn’t apologize.
Bluder won better than 82 percent of her games over
a 6-year span at the Queen Bees helm, and in 2010
became just the 34th coach in NCAA women’s basketball
history to win 500 games. She opened this season
with a 567-241 career record and ranked second in alltime
wins at Iowa with 211. Her Iowa teams advanced
to the NCAA Tournament in eight of her first 11 seasons
and she took Drake to a pair before that.
Pingeton poured in a still-SAU-record 2,502 points
under Bluder’s direction from 1986–90, and then, upon
graduation, followed her coach to Drake for two seasons
as an assistant coach. She returned to St. Ambrose to
helm her own program from 1992 through 2000, eclipsing
Bluder’s school record of 165 wins with 192 of her
own. She led the Queen Bees to the national tournament
five times.
For the Record
COACH RECORD NCAA BERTHS
Lisa Bluder 567-241 10
Bill Fennelly 520-213 10
Robin Becker Pingeton 351-175 2
Tasha McDowell 25-65 0
TOTALS 1463-692 22
(Numbers through 2010–11 season)
Next? The current quartet might not be the last
Queen Bee products to grace a Division I bench.
Future candidates include:
Jenny (DeSmet) Putnam ’91 – The Rock Island Alleman
graduate has been a Pingeton assistant since 2003
and a coach for over a decade. Currently, the wife and
mother of three said she is content at Missouri. “It’s
a great situation so there is just no reason to leave,”
she said.
Jennifer Goetz ’07 – A three-time St. Ambrose All-
American as a player, Goetz spent three seasons as
an SAU assistant, then led Davenport Assumption to
an Iowa state high school title in her head coaching
debut last year. Currently is head coach at Pleasant
Valley (Iowa) High School.
Krista Van Hauen – Current Queen Bees head coach
brought three years of experience as a Division
I assistant, one at Bradley and two at Northern
Colorado, to St. Ambrose. Last year’s 29-5 record was
the best debut by any of SAU’s 10 women’s coaches.
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