"A major part of me says, `I know how to do this.' And I see all of the long-term potential here. This program should be a top-20 program. With a few solid years of recruiting we will be back in business."
Those were the words of Charli Turner Thorne a little more than 10 years ago as she prepared for her first season as head coach at Arizona State. At the time, Turner Thorne was inheriting a program which had only eight scholarship players ready to suit up for the 1996-97 season, had not won more than eight games in three years and had played in only one NCAA Tournament Game in 13 years. To say that she had a very difficult task in front of her would have been a major understatement.
Fast forward to the present day and one can see that Turner Thorne, who enters her 11th season as ASU's head coach, was anything but kidding when she said ASU women's basketball could be one of the top programs in the country. With a determination and loyalty almost unparalleled, Turner Thorne has turned ASU into a Pac-10 Conference and national contender.
The Sun Devils are currently in the midst of a school record seven consecutive postseason appearances, which includes invites to the NCAA Tournament four times in the last six years. During that span, the Sun Devils have twice claimed Pac-10 Conference supremacy, winning their first Pac-10 title in 2001 and the inaugural Pac-10 Tournament championship in 2002. Two years ago, Turner Thorne had the Sun Devils in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Tournament for the first time in more than 20 years. Last season, success continued to travel with the Sun Devils as they tied a school record with 25 wins, tied their highest-ever seed in the NCAA Tournament (No. 4), tied their highest regular season ranking in school history (No. 9), set the single-season school record for consecutive wins (10) and went undefeated at home for the first ever (15-0).
"I've always known that the opportunity at ASU is tremendous, and the potential for this program to be a perennial top 10 team is unquestionable," the 2006 WBCA/District VIII Coach of the Year said. "We've built a winning program and established a championship tradition here at ASU. People across the country know that Arizona State women's basketball has become one of the premier women's sports programs, and that is something that we have worked hard to build and take a lot of pride in." But as anyone who has spent any time around Turner Thorne knows, she has no intention of allowing her program to sit back and bask in its recent success. "A lot of people will tell you that maintaining a program is harder than building one, and we're finding that out," Turner Thorne said. "We've established a winning tradition, and now our challenge is to consistently win Pac-10 Championships and take the next step in the NCAA Tournament. We've still got building to do in the sense that we haven't gotten to the NCAA?Final Four yet, and we haven't won a national championship. The next step for this program is to get to an NCAA Elite Eight and Final Four berth. I'd like to jump over a couple of those steps, which I think is possible, but a lot of things have to fall into place. For us right now, it's about maintaining the championship level within our conference and taking the next step to a national championship level."
And as ASU fans have witnessed, Turner Thorne, who holds a 172-129 record in 10 seasons at Arizona State, only makes promises she intends to keep.
When she came to Tempe ten years ago, Turner Thorne told Sun Devil fans that ASU could be one of the premier women's basketball programs in the country. If the last few seasons are any indication, the Sun Devil program has embraced Turner Thorne's expectations and is ready to take that next step toward becoming a national contender.
In 2004-05, the Sun Devils turned in a 24-10 overall record, one victory shy of the school record, and earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament for a school-record sixth consecutive postseason appearance. The Sun Devils advanced all the way to the Sweet Sixteen, which was played at Wells Fargo Arena. The team's 12-6 mark in the Pac-10 tied a school record for most conference wins in a season.
Arizona State finished the home half of their schedule with at least 12 wins for the fourth straight season thanks to their 12-2 mark. Included among those victories was the team's fourth straight Holiday Classic title, a fifth consecutive home win over intrastate rival Arizona and a dramatic 61-50 win at Wells Fargo Arena over national power Connecticut. The UConn game drew the largest crowd in school history at Wells Fargo Arena, with 8,927 fans in attendance.
The 2003-04 season was another successful step in the building of the program, as the team went 17-12 and earned a berth in the WNIT for the second straight year. The year saw the Sun Devils earn a 13-1 home mark for the third straight season, including a win over then seventh-ranked Stanford.
In 2002-03, Turner Thorne led a very young team to a 16-14 record for ASU's fourth consecutive winning season despite having her top returning player, Betsy Boardman, go down in the preseason with a season-ending knee injury, With a starting lineup featuring three true freshmen and two sophomores and a roster with just two players who had been in the program more than one year, Turner Thorne and the Sun?Devils upset three ranked opponents, won the Wells Fargo Holiday Classic, tied the school record for home wins with a 13-2 mark and earned a postseason bid for a school-record fourth consecutive season, advancing to the second round of the Women's National Invitational.
Turner Thorne's 2001-02 Sun Devils turned in one of the most successful campaigns in school history, notching a 25-9 record to tie the school record for wins in a single season. The team was ranked in the national polls in the preseason for the first time in 19 years and opened the year by winning both the Paradise Jam in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the ASU Holiday Classic in Tempe.
As the 2001-02 conference season started, ASU set out to defend its Pac-10 title, turning in its biggest win over intrastate rival Arizona in over 20 years and the team's first win at Oregon's McArthur Court in nine tries. The Sun Devils matched their school record for conference wins with a 12-6 mark and finished in a tie for second in the league standings. Next up was the inaugural Pac-10 Conference Tournament in Eugene, Ore. The Sun Devils made the first event an exciting one, coming from behind in all three games to win the tournament and earn the Pac-10's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. ASU opened tournament play with Arizona and rallied from a 10-point second-half deficit to down the Wildcats 66-58. Next up were the host Oregon Ducks who the Sun Devils dispatched 64-58 to the dismay of the hometown fans at McArthur Court.
In the championship game of the Pac-10 Tournament, Arizona State matched up with the second-ranked Stanford Cardinal, who had won the Pac-10 regular-season title with a perfect 18-0 record and were riding a 22-game winning streak. ASU played Stanford close in the first half but fell behind 40-31 with just over 18 minutes to play in the game. Turner Thorne and the Sun Devils were not quite ready to fold, though, and turned that deficit into a lead six minutes later, an advantage they would not relinquish en route to the 70-63 upset of the No. 2 Cardinal and the Pac-10 Tournament title.
With the Pac-10's automatic NCAA bid in hand, Arizona State's "comeback kids" traveled to Nashville, Tenn., where they once again rallied from a deficit to down highly-touted Wisconsin in the first round to win ASU's first postseason game since 1983 before falling to fourth-ranked Vanderbilt in the second round to end the stellar 2001-02 campaign.
Turner Thorne and the Sun Devils first vaulted into the national spotlight in 2000-01, capturing the country's attention with a near upset of the second-ranked Tennessee Lady Vols in the first ever outdoor women's basketball game, the AstraZeneca Hoops for the Cure Classic, which raised over $10,000 for breast cancer research, treatment and awareness in the Valley. ASU notched a school-record 12 Pac-10 victories to win the school's first Pac-10 Conference basketball title, defeating perennial conference powers Oregon and Arizona for the first time in Turner Thorne's tenure, including two wins over the Wildcats to snap a 14-game losing streak to the team's intrastate rival.
With a 20-11 record, the team's best in nine years, the Sun?Devils broke into the national rankings for the first time in nine years and made their first return to the NCAA Tournament, earning an invitation to the Mideast Region and a first-round matchup with 18th-ranked LSU. And all of the successes on the court were wrapped around the birth of Turner Thorne's second son, Liam, who arrived less than an hour after the Sun Devils learned of their NCAA Tournament bid on Selection Sunday, March 11, 2001. That berth followed by a birth put Turner Thorne herself in the national spotlight with appearances in USA?Today and on ABC's "Good Morning America."
While ASU earned its return to NCAA?play in 2001, indications that March Madness was just around the corner were plentiful during the previous season. The Sun Devils made their first foray into postseason play since 1992, earning a bid to play in the 2000 Women's National Invitation Tournament. ASU's 14-14 regular-season record and seven conference wins were the best for the team in seven years.
Turner Thorne's undying commitment to her program was obvious to anyone who followed the team in 1998-99. The feisty and always intense Sun Devil mentor did not miss a beat, despite giving birth to her first child at the height of Pac-10 competition. Her first son, Conor, arrived on Feb. 9, 1999, his birth date sandwiched between two overtime games.
Through it all, Turner Thorne kept Arizona State on track and in the thick of things, an amazing feat in itself. The Sun Devils notched double figures in wins for the second consecutive season and finished tied for sixth in the Pac-10 (6-12), their highest conference finish in six years. The final two weeks of the regular season were highlighted by near-upsets of two top 20 teams.
In fact, the Turner Thorne-led Sun Devils posted wins over NCAA Tournament participant St. Joseph's and WNIT team Washington. ASU played two other NCAA qualifiers, Arizona and Texas, within nine points. The season capped off another important accomplishment as she led her squad to back-to-back double-digit win seasons, the first time an ASU coach had done so in six years.
During her second season in 1997-98, Turner Thorne took the fast-paced rebuilding of the ASU women's program to new heights. The team tied for seventh in the Pac-10 Conference and won six conference games for the first time in five years. The Sun Devils also achieved their most overall wins since 1992-93, a mark that has been bettered in each of the last fourseasons.
Turner Thorne's drive to return the program to prominence was evidenced strongly by the squad's 77-76 upset of then-undefeated and seventh-ranked Washington on January 8, 1998. The victory was one of the biggest upsets in ASU women's basketball history and marked an important milestone.
In just her first season in Tempe, Turner Thorne began laying the critical foundation for ASU's future successes, guiding ASU to its most victories in four years and moved out of last in the Pac-10 standings.
Turner Thorne hangs her hat on pressure defense and up-tempo basketball, a philosophy that continues to pay dividends for the Sun Devils.
"We try to take teams out of their comfort zone, frazzle them if you will," she says. "We are going to create offense with our defense. We go into to every game with a blue-collar persona. We will outwork you -- win or lose. "Defense, along with our team chemistry, has been the biggest reasons for our success. I've coached enough and watched the great programs enough to know that you don't get to the NCAA?Tournament unless you're a great rebounding team and a great defensive team. While we love offense and want to score a lot of points, we will always have a major emphasis on being the best defensive team in the Pac-10 Conference, if not the country."
Turner Thorne's initial head coaching stop appeared precarious at first glance. Before she arrived in Flagstaff, Northern Arizona had posted one winning season in 19 years and won just 28 percent of their games. Her immediate predecessor at NAU had gone 10-70 in three seasons.
But Turner Thorne breathed life into the program, leading the Lumberjacks to a 40-40 mark in her three seasons in Flagstaff, including a 14-13 mark and a fourth-place finish in the Big Sky Conference in 1995-96. In the process, she became the first coach in NAU history to lead the Lumberjacks to back-to-back winning seasons. In 1994-95, NAU went 14-12, the school's first winning season in nine years. Turner Thorne's Lumberjacks also beat the Sun Devils in 1994-95 and 1995-96. NAU had defeated ASU just twice in the 17 previous meetings.
But reviving programs was nothing new to Turner Thorne. Prior to her first head coaching stint, she was an assistant at Santa Clara University where she honed her pressure defense and served as recruiting coordinator for three seasons.
"Things were starting to fall into place when I got to Santa Clara," she says. "But our pressure defense was a cornerstone that helped us turn the corner."
In 1990-91, her initial season as an assistant, she helped the Broncos orchestrate one of the biggest turnarounds in women's basketball history. SCU, 9-17 the year before, went 28-3, won the West Coast Conference title and won the National Women's Invitation Tournament. Why the turnaround? At one point in the season, the Broncos were ranked as high as seventh in the country in scoring defense, eventually winding up 11th.
In 1991-92, the Broncos went 21-10 and advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the first time. Santa Clara upset California in the first round before falling to Texas Tech. In 1992-93, Turner Thorne's last year with the Broncos, SCU won its third straight conference crown.
Turner Thorne is no stranger to the Pacific-10 Conference. She played four years at Stanford University (1984-88) and served as a graduate assistant for two years at the University of Washington (1988-90).
"I worked with the guards at Washington and performed a lot of your typical GA duties," she said. "But I wasn't afraid to put my two cents in. I guess I've always been someone who will do as much as you allow me to do."
During Turner Thorne's stint at Washington, where she earned her master's degree in education in 1990, the Huskies advanced to the NCAA Tournament both seasons. In 1988-89, UW went 23-10 and beat Hawaii in the first round of the NCAA Tournament before bowing out to Stephen F. Austin. The following season was the best in Husky annals. UW went 28-3 and 17-1 in the Pac-10, sharing the conference crown with Stanford. The Huskies snagged the top seed in the NCAA Mideast Regional and advanced to the Elite Eight before falling to eventual national runner-up Auburn.
"Coach (Chris) Gobrecht and her staff were wonderful to work with," she says. "It was their influence that helped me truly believe in a unique style of pressure defense."
A four-year letterwinner at Stanford, Turner Thorne was co-captain of the 1987-88 Cardinal squad that advanced to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen. The Cardinal went to the Sweet Sixteen again the following year, then, after sharing the Pac-10 title with Turner Thorne's Huskies, won its first national title in 1990.
"I learned an incredible amount in my four years at Stanford. We accomplished a great deal," she says. And Turner Thorne was fortunate enough to play for three of her four seasons under the one of the nation's best in VanDerveer, who was inducted in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002.
Turner Thorne was twice voted Most Inspirational Player by her Cardinal teammates and was a Pac-10 All-Academic selection. She won Stanford's H-Block Award in 1988, awarded to the senior female athlete with the highest grade point average. She graduated in 1988 with a degree in psychology. She also studied at Oxford University for a semester during her junior year.
A native of southern California, Turner Thorne graduated from Bishop Alemany High School in Mission Hills in 1984. She was an all-conference and all-state selection as well as conference MVP her senior year.
Now Turner Thorne looks to utilize the lessons she's learned as a player and coach to maintaining the championship tradition she has instilled in her program at ASU.
"I have a very strong sense in regard to my basketball philosophy, and my goal is to recruit players that buy into it and who want to win a national championship," she said. "I'm very excited about what we have accomplished and know that the potential for our future successes is unlimited. It's not just the head coach - it's everyone involved with the program, right down to the managers."
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