Mizzou women’s basketball to retain head coach Robin Pingeton | Report
Robin Pingeton looks set to return for Year 15.
Missouri women’s basketball, per a Monday morning report from Power Mizzou, will retain Pingeton for her 15th season as the Tigers’ head coach.
That puts MU in a novel spot with its women’s basketball spot coach, who is set to enter the final year of current contract. Pingeton’s buyout dropped to $233,333 on Monday morning, the same day reports emerged that she is being retained.
The coach’s current contract went into effect July 1, 2018, and is set to expire April 30, 2025. She is currently paid a base salary of $400,000 per year and earns an additional $100,000 in non-salary compensation.
At the end of the 2022-23 campaign, then-MU athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois said Pingeton needed to get the Tigers back to the NCAA Tournament to keep her job.
The Tigers’ 2023-24 campaign ended with a loss to Florida in the first round of the SEC Tournament and with a 11-19 record, well short of an NCAA Tournament or WNIT berth.
After Reed-Francois left for Arizona in February, the status of Pingeton’s job security became a question. Would interim AD Marcy Girton or a new athletic-department leader follow up on someone else’s ultimatum?
There appears to be an answer.
One novel detail in Pingeton’s contract is that if she is fired without cause she must be given 30 days of advance written notice, unless otherwise agreed to by the athletic director and the coach.
The search for a new Missouri athletic director is now well into its second month.
As far as the women's basketball program is concerned, it seems, Mizzou is carrying on as normal.
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The Tigers have been quiet in this transfer portal window, which has been open since March 16 and will remain open until May 1.
Standout point guard Mama Dembele is currently the lone departure from MU, as she grad transferred to USF on March 22. Missouri is also set to lose Hayley Frank, Abby Feit and Micah Linthacum to eligibility.
Missouri has signed two players to its Class of 2024: point guard Londyn Olyphant and wing Ma'Riya Vincent. They looks set to join a promising underclassmen core that includes Ashton Judd, Grace Slaughter, Averi Kroenke and Abbey Schreacke.
Over the course of her MU tenure, Pingeton has taken the Tigers to four NCAA Tournament appearances and six WNIT appearances. Before this season, the Tigers had been to the WNIT for three straight years and without an NCAA Tournament appearance since 2019.
Pingeton replaced Cindy Stein at the helm in 2010, joining from Illinois State, where she had an 144-81 record to take the Redbirds to the NCAA Tournament twice and to the WNIT three times. She was Missouri Valley Conference Coach of the Year on two occasions, in 2004 and 2010. Pingeton has a 236-200 record since taking over the team in Columbia.
Reports of Pingeton’s retention come on the same day as one of the more highly anticipated days in collegiate women’s basketball history. LSU and Iowa are set to take the stage for an Elite Eight encore of last season’s title bout, and top-seeded USC and perennial powerhouse UConn will face off for a Final Four berth.
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This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Mizzou women’s basketball to retain head coach Robin Pingeton | Report
