Counting down the worst Texas Tech coaches of the Big 12 era

No. 2: Marlene Stollings

It’s one thing for a coach to fail to win enough games as each person on this list was guilty of.  But when a coach violates the trust of his or her players and their families by being abusive, that takes matters to a more despicable level.

That’s what recently disgraced Lady Raider head coach Marlene Stollings was accused of earlier this month before she was fired.  It was a disturbing turn of events though one we should have seen coming as 12 players left the program during her two years in charge.

On the court, Stollings was doing a decent job of pulling the Lady Raiders out of their decade-long tailspin.  After a 14-17 debut, she produced an 18-11 season in 2019-20 and increased her program’s Big 12 win total from four to seven.

Still, her 11-25 overall Big 12 record was atrocious.  Figuring out how to be competitive in the Big 12 was certainly the next step in her program’s evolution but she never got that chance because her abusive player came to light in a USA Today article, forcing Hocutt’s hand.

What’s disturbing is that her abusive coaching style allegedly dates back to her days at Minnesota.  So why Kirby Hocutt decided to bring her to Texas Tech is hard to understand.

But he did and she showed her true colors.  Now, the program is in the hands of a third different woman in the span of three years.  But while Whitaker was atrocious as a coach, Stollings was appalling as a human which makes her the second-worst Texas Tech coach of the Big 12 era.