INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Stephanie White is coming home to win again. Yes, after collecting Indiana's prestigious Miss Basketball Award in high school and leading Purdue to the 1999 NCAA title, after playing on the Indiana Fever expansion team and serving as an assistant coach during the franchise's 2012 championship run, White has decided she has some unfinished business to complete in her second stint as Indiana's head coach. She can't wait.
So three days after Indiana hired White, she returned to Gainbridge Fieldhouse and received a rousing reception from her home-state fans with some of her new players, including Caitlin Clark , in the crowd. “It's going to be really hard for me to not get emotional today, but you know, I think all of these familiar faces in the building here, this is coming home for me,” White said Monday during her reintroductory news conference. “It has been such an experience with this franchise for nearly 25 years, from Day 1, and the opportunity to come home and lead this young, exciting team is really exciting.
" Why not? The 47-year-old White returns to Indiana as a far more experienced coach than the one who left in 2016 just two seasons into her head coaching career with a record of 37-31. She spent the next four-plus seasons as Vanderbilt's head coach, compiling a 46-83 mark before taking a year off and eventually returning to the WNBA with the Connecticut Sun. There, she went 55-25 and led the Sun to the league's semifinals in both seasons, .
