New Coach in Cameron

Rally for McCallie: "This has been a dream job of mine for many years." News & Observer/Chuck Liddy

Joanne P. McCallie has traded in her Spartan helmet for a pair of Blue Devil horns. After seven seasons as the women's varsity basketball coach at Michigan State University, McCallie heads south to lead the Lady Devils squad.

At Michigan State, she led the Spartans to five straight NCAA Tournament appearances, four straight twenty-win seasons, and an appearance in the NCAA championship game in 2005. In the 2004-05 season, the Spartans won a school-record thirty-three games; won a school-record fourteen Big Ten games, while sharing their second Big Ten regular-season championship; won their first Big Ten Tournament title; finished 13-0 at home; had a school-record seventeen-game winning streak; and beat thirteen nationally-ranked teams, including four teams ranked No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 nationally. That season she was named National Coach of the Year by the Associated Press, Basketball Times, and Nike, as well as being voted Big Ten Coach of the Year by the league's media. She was also selected the 2005 Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan College Coach of the Year.

McCallie earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Northwestern University in 1987, and a master's in business administration from Auburn University in 1990. As an undergraduate, she played varsity hoops all four years and is ranked seventh in Wildcat history with 378 career assists.

Before coaching at Michigan State, McCallie spent eight years as head coach at the University of Maine, and as an assistant coach at Auburn from 1988 to 1992. Called Coach P by her players because of her maiden name, Palumbo, McCallie says she and her family are "absolutely thrilled about the opportunity to serve at Duke. This has been a dream job of mine for many years. We cannot wait to meet and get to know a team that we are so very impressed by academically, as well as athletically."

McCallie replaces Gail Goestenkors, who left Duke after fifteen years to become the women's head coach at the University of Texas at Austin. During her final ten seasons at Duke, Goestenkors led the Blue Devils to annual NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen appearances, seven Elite Eight appearances, four Final Four appearances, and two NCAA Championship games. Goestenkors led Duke to an unprecedented seven consecutive thirty-win seasons from 2000-01 to 2006-07. Her all-time coaching record after fifteen seasons was 396-99, for a winning percentage of 80 percent.