Former TCU coach shares surprising reaction to team’s historic Elite Eight bid
As TCU concluded its historic season with a defeat in the Elite 8 one person who could have been a tad bitter, irritated, or resentful, over the current state of the team is its former head coach.
Raegan Pebley isn’t having any of it.
“I love it. I think it’s great,” said Pebley, who was TCU’s head coach from 2014 through 2023.
TCU women’s basketball reached the national stage for the first time in the program’s history, and set a number of records under second-year coach Mark Campbell. Its loss in the Elite 8 against Texas on Monday night ended a season where the program finished 34-4, and won the Big 12 regular season and conference tourney titles.
Three players on TCU’s current roster were on the team from Pebley’s tenure: Knisha Godfrey, Aaliyah Roberson and DaiJa Turner. They are three of 10 players in Big 12 history to finish in last place, and win a conference championship, over the course of their college careers.
Not every coach in Pebley’s situation would enjoy this sort of development. Often the case the former coach is a hurt because they are only too sure their successor has the support that they didn’t receive.
On this topic, a former coach in Pebley’s spot may choose not to say anything publicly at all.
Pebley, who grew up the daughter of a basketball coach, is genuine. She spent nine years at TCU, and has not a bad word to say about any day, week, month, year or season. She is well aware of what this run could ultimately have on the state of TCU’s program.
“I am excited for where their program is right now,” Pebley told the Star-Telegram. “So happy for TCU and the fans and everybody who’s poured into it over the years. And it’s just exciting to see where it continues to go.
“Once you step foot onto the NCAA Tournament, it’s a game changer for your program.”
Of all of the local coaches who had to deal with the realities of coaching through COVID, Pebley had the hardest turn of bad luck.
In the spring of 2020, Pebley had easily her best team. At the time of the COVID shut down, TCU was 22-7 overall, and 13-5 in the Big 12. After narrowly missing on NCAA Tourney bids in each of the previous two years, they were going to go to March Madness in 2020. She had a Sweet 16 team.
Pebley’s teams had reached the WNIT four times before that season, and the semifinals twice; the ’20 team was her breakthrough.
But, COVID.
“That was the summer (of ‘20) I had fairly benign brain surgery, and losing the NCAA Tournament was not that big of a deal,” said Pebley, who had been diagnosed with a tumor two years earlier but delayed surgery until the season was over despite her surgeon suggesting it needed to be done ASAP, in December of 2019.
The NCAA canceled the 2020 NCAA Tournament, and did not release a Field of 68 bracket.
“That team was that special to us. We had built the culture to a place where we could be selective who we recruited,” she said. “When we had to shut down, it was traumatic to our players, and to our recruiting.”
Players graduated, the following season was a mess because of COVID protocols, and the team never returned to the level it reached before the COVID shutdown.
While the 2022-’23 academic year was the best ever in the history of TCU athletics, across the board, Pebley’s team was the exception. On Feb. 27, 2023, with two years remaining on her contract, she announced she would resign after the season.
In Jan. of 2024, she was named the general manager of the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, where she currently works.
With a daughter who is a senior in high school, and for family reasons, she splits time between Fort Worth and Los Angeles.
Even though most of the players she recruited have graduated or moved on to other spots, and most of this current team’s current success is via transfers that Campbell recruited, Pebley not only follows the team but remains a fan of it.
This story was originally published March 30, 2025 at 1:21 PM.
