A tale of two jobs
WASHINGTON, D.C. — When I informed George Washington head coach Jennifer Rizzotti on Sunday afternoon that Team USA held a big lead on Louisville, she responded, “Oh, good!”
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Then Rizzotti, who is also an assistant coach for Team USA, diplomatically explained why she thought the national team matched up better with Louisville than with Connecticut, which it beat more narrowly on January 27.
Rizzotti had not seen the Louisville score yet because George Washington had tipped off against Saint Louis at 2pm — the same start time as Team USA in Louisville. The Colonials lost, 59-45, but Rizzotti spoke positively about the growth her young roster has showed this season. The game capped a 12-day stretch in which Rizzotti coached four games with George Washington, coached one game with Team USA, hit the road for a recruiting trip, and still made time for family and for the Tennessee-UConn game — a must-watch event for the former Huskies point guard.
The A-10 schedule makers unwittingly helped Rizzotti during this stretch with three out of four games at home. George Washington lost the first of those games, to Dayton on January 22, despite graduate student Alexandra Maund’s team-high 16 points. A day later, Rizzotti was one of approximately 630,000 people glued to their televisions to watch UConn overcome a rare halftime deficit and defeat Tennessee, 60-45.
“We started it,” Rizzotti said of her 1994-95 UConn team, “so whenever talk about the rivalry, it’s like, we were the first to play them and to play in that 1 2 game and to beat them in a national championship. … It’s always a fun memory to think about our games against them and how they always stood for something much bigger than just a regular-season game.”
Much had changed since the rivalry’s peak, most noticeably for Rizzotti the absence of legendary Tennessee head coach Pat Summitt, who died in 2016. But still, Rizzotti said, “it was cool for me to see it.”
Three days later, on January 26, Rizzotti and the Colonials pulled off a second-half comeback of their own, beating UMass, 50-47, behind 14 points from redshirt freshman Mayowa Taiwo. A mere 25 hours later, Rizzotti was Connecticut-bound for the Team USA game.
Team USA played four other exhibition games at the start of the college season, but Rizzotti, along with Team USA and South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley, was not able to be there. As in those games, Team USA was in capable hands last Monday with WNBA head coaches Cheryl Reeve and Dan Hughes, but when Rizzotti realized her schedule would work out just right, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be there.
“It just worked out that we weren’t practicing heavy that day , that we weren’t playing for two days, and that it was UConn and it’s an easy trip,” she explained.
The one-hour flight to Hartford was crucial, Rizzotti said: “I would want to go to only if it didn’t impact my time here” at GW, and flying across the country for November exhibition games at Oregon and Oregon State “is a totally different animal than going to UConn.”
Even the longer flight to Louisville would have posed more logistical challenges. Instead, Rizzotti was present for half of GW’s practice on Monday, which included weights, film study, and a walk-through of the scouting report for the next opponent. She headed to the airport in time for a 3:15 flight and was at her hotel in Hartford by 5:00, 30 minutes before Team USA’s bus departed for the XL Center.
Team USA’s 15-point win was the first for Rizzotti as a UConn opponent in several attempts, as she had frequently scheduled UConn while she was the head coach at the University of Hartford.
“It was nice to be on the bench on the winning side,” she admitted, but she pointed out that the home team took a lot of positives from the game, too. “I think it’s fun for —they’re always the ones that are idolized,” she said. “So to be in a situation where they’re actually idolizing other players is unique for the UConn kids. … Geno said, ‘I just wanted them to be proud of how they played and to … be respected by the national team.’ And so I feel like they accomplished that.”
With her own mission accomplished, Rizzotti flew back to Washington, DC, on Tuesday morning. She stopped at home to see her family for an hour and a half before meeting her GW players to bus to Philadelphia, home of A-10 opponent Saint Joseph’s. Maund paced the Colonials with a season-high 18 points in Wednesday’s six-point win.
The Team USA game “was sandwiched between two wins for us, so that’s always good,” Rizzotti quipped. After returning with the team to DC on Wednesday night, Rizzotti flew to Minnesota to recruit on Thursday and back on Friday. That may sound like a lot of miles logged and hotels booked, but for Rizzotti, the trade-offs are worth it.
“It’s just very rare to get to be around other really good coaches in the middle of your own season,” she explained. “In the huddle it’s like, what’s Cheryl thinking about drawing up and what’s Dan suggesting? … So it’s fun to kind of think the game with a different team … I benefit so much professionally from being around other great minds, and then just to be around pros who think and prepare for the game … at a very, very elite level.”
Crucially, the George Washington players are supportive of their coach pulling double duty. “They thought it was cool,” Rizzotti said. “… I really try to not miss a lot with them … so they know I’m committed to them and they know that I want to be here.”
Her time with Team USA also helps her at GW, as she works with other top-notch coaches and some of the best athletes in the world. Rizzotti explained that the national team players’ elite-level preparation for games makes her think about how she can inspire and prepare her student-athletes to perform at their best. Most of them will not play beyond college, she said, “so how can I help them peak while they’re at GW?”
Rizzotti will not be with Team USA during its Olympic Qualifying Tournament, which begins on February 6. (The United States has already qualified for the Olympics but is playing in the tournament to further the team’s development.) The next time she will rejoin the team will be at the Final Four, with five months to go until Team USA tips off in Tokyo.
“I know I can’t be a big part of it right now,” Rizzotti said on Sunday, “but it’s still exciting to think about what’s coming. And so with it being … against UConn and me having a chance to actually physically get there, it just was like it all worked out.”
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