Former Lady Jag Head Coach Lands At Jacksonville State
Jacksonville State University has hired another former South Alabama coach for their sports program. Rick Pietri was named the women’s head basketball coach by JSU athletic director Warren Koegel on Monday.
Pietri was the head coach at South Alabama for 13 seasons and turned the Lady Jaguar team into a contender in the Sun Belt Conference. He led the team to back-to-back Sun Belt West Division titles in 2003 and 2004.
The Jags made consecutive WNIT postseason appearances in 2003 and 2004 and is the all-time winningest coach in Lady Jaguars history with a career record of 220-167. Prior to Pietri’s arrival, the Lady Jags had posted 10 consecutive losing seasons.
In Pietri’s first season in the 2000-01 season the Jags posted and improved 13-16 record and was the most by the program in over 10 years and was just two wins fewer than the 15 wins combined over the previous two seasons. In his second season, the Lady Jags started out 16-5 in its first 21 games of the season while posting the first winning season since the 1989-90 season with a 17-11 record. Then the third season the Lady Jags finished 22-7 after opening the season 14-1 to win the division championship for the second consecutive year.
The Lady Jags had a 130-54 record overall at home. He led the Lady Jags to a winning season in five of his last six seasons at South Alabama.
Pietri is a South Alabama Alum and began his collegiate coaching career as a men’s assistant at Spring Hill College for four season from 1989 through 1993. He then joined Duane Reboul’s staff at Birmingham Southern for 1993-94. He began his head coaching career as the boys’ coach at B.C. Rain High School from 1994-98 where he went 106-32 over four seasons and making four consecutive final four appearances and earning 5A Coach of the Year honors in 1998. He then spent two seasons coaching the boys at St. Paul’s Episcopal School in Mobile before becoming the head coach at South Alabama in April of 2000.
Pietri takes over a team that finished just 1-27 overall and 1-15 in their conference last season.
Back in December, JSU announced the hiring of former South Alabama defensive coordinator Bill Clark as their head football coach. Clark brought Duwan Walker with his to be his defensive coordinator and also hired former South Alabama assistant coach Chuck Dunn to coach the inside linebackers and to serve as the Strength and conditioning coach.