Two months after signing a contract extension that would have kept her in midtown Atlanta through 2030, Georgia Tech head coach Nell Fortner announced her retirement on Monday after six seasons leading the Yellow Jackets.
Fortner, 66, was hired at Georgia Tech in 2019 to clean up the program after former coach MaChelle Joseph was fired amid a scandal. Fortner guided the Yellow Jackets to three NCAA Tournament appearances — including one this season — and an overall win-loss record of 110-75. In 2021, she was named ACC Coach of the Year after taking the Yellow Jackets to the Sweet 16 for just the second time in program history.
At her retirement press conference on Tuesday, Fortner called it “bittersweet” and she knows “she won’t be a college basketball coach” going forward “but I got a lot of energy left.” She added she had been contemplating stepping away from the game for a while, despite signing that extension.
“Y’all realize how much change has happened in the last six years when I took this job in 2019? It was pretty much normal college athletics… Then came the transfer portal and NIL… But we navigated it,” Fortner said. “I don’t feel like I’m old. I feel like I’ve got a lot left in the tank, but the atmosphere today in college athletics, it’s not for me.”
Indeed, in addition to enduring an NCAA investigation from Joseph’s time overseeing the program, Fortner had to grapple with what all coaches did over the last six years: the pandemic, then the portal, and then the introduction of NIL. In 2021, the NCAA ruled that Joseph had “committed practice and coaching limit violations” and “violated head coach responsibility rules,” which led to a penalty of a $5,000 fine plus 1 percent of the budget for the women’s basketball program.
But Fortner dealt with it all and had four seasons of a .500 or better record in ACC play. She coached two-time ACC Defensive Player of the Year Lorela Cubaj and then ACC Sixth Player of the Year Dani Carnegie this season.
This past year started off well for the Yellow Jackets with a 15-game winning streak, a stretch of games that was their best start in program history and included Georgia Tech’s first win in Chapel Hill’s Carmichael Arena since 2012. But the season ended with a thud as the Yellow Jackets lost six of their last seven games, capped off by an NCAA Tournament defeat to Richmond.
A source familiar with the situation at Georgia Tech told SB Nation that its players were being “tampered with” by other teams as early as February. Before Fortner announced her retirement, five Yellow Jackets — including Carnegie — had already entered the transfer portal. Following Fortner’s announcement, three-year starters in Kara Dunn and Tonie Morgan followed.
“No players makes it a tough rebuild,” one ACC assistant coach said of the Georgia Tech opening.
Fortner shook her head no on Tuesday when asked if she would have any input on who would be the next coach at Georgia Tech. She did say that she encouraged the current Yellow Jackets in the portal to wait and see who the next coach would be before making a decision.
“It’s a new era. It’s time for a new voice,” Fortner said. “It just feels like the right time… To be able to walk away on my terms feels pretty good.”
Fortner retires with an overall record of 272-192. She won an SEC title at Auburn in 2009 and a Big Ten title at Purdue in 1997. She also coached the U.S. National Team to an Olympic gold medal in 2000. Before becoming a head coach, she worked under Hall of Famers Gary Blair and Leon Barmore. She is one of the few people to win Coach of the Year honors in three different major conferences. In her seven years between Auburn and Georgia Tech, Fortner worked as a television analyst.
In almost any sport, Georgia Tech is viewed as one of the hardest jobs in the ACC. Aside from not being as flush with resources — read: money for NIL — it also has high academic standards and difficult admission requirements. It’s why former football coach Paul Johnson ran the triple-option for years in the Flats, allowing him to do more with less. It was a scheme that leveled the playing field against the likes of Clemson and Georgia. In basketball however, there is no triple-option.
Still, Georgia Tech is seen by some as an attractive job at the Power 4 level in a conference that supports and cares about women’s basketball. At her retirement press conference, Fortner applauded the support she received from President Angel Cabrera and athletic director J. Batt.
For a while, it was assumed that Fortner’s longtime assistant coach Blanche Alverson would be her successor. However, after six seasons alongside Fortner — and just six days before her retirement — Alverson was hired as the head coach at San Diego.
So, who might get the job? Barring a Manny Diaz-esque situation where Georgia Tech lures Alverson back to the Flats, here are some options that make sense for the Yellow Jackets.
Erin Dickerson-Davis
Dickerson-Davis is the current coach at William & Mary, played at Northwestern and is a former assistant coach at Wake Forest and Georgetown, so she’s familiar with the ACC and how to navigate recruiting hurdles at a high-academic institution. Dickerson-Davis is an attractive coaching candidate right now because of the success she had at William & Mary this season, where she led the Tribe to their first NCAA Tournament berth and first March Madness victory, topping High Point in the First Four. Dickerson-Davis just won — in just her third season — in a place where no coach had before. At Wake, she recruited and coached three All-ACC selections.
Aaron Rousell
Could the coach that handed Fortner the final loss of her career succeed her? Perhaps. Currently the head coach at Richmond, Rousell is a hot coaching candidate in this cycle after leading the Spiders to an at-large berth and victory in the NCAA Tournament. He is 78-24 in his last three seasons leading the A-10 program and has had success recruiting in the ACC’s traditional footprint up and down the east coast. He is a graduate of Iowa and previously coached at Division II Minnesota State and Division III Chicago before making the jump to Division I at Bucknell in 2012. As a Division I head coach, Rousell is 273-136.
Itoro Coleman
A native of Georgia and an All-ACC star at Clemson, Coleman has coached all over the country over the past 25 years, from Butler to Penn State to Marquette to North Carolina to now at Virginia Tech, where she’s the associate head coach under Megan Duffy. Coleman’s previous tenure as a head coach was a rough one — where she went 25-63 in three seasons leading her alma mater — but she’s a good recruiter, knows the ACC landscape, and has a knack for working with guards. Last offseason, she was a finalist for the opening at Stony Brook, but the gig ultimately went to Joy McCorvey. In the last five seasons, Coleman has been on coaching staffs that have gone to four NCAA Tournaments. This year, the Hokies were left on the wrong side of the bubble as the first team out.
Vanessa Blair-Lewis
Blair-Lewis has won everywhere she’s been, and at places where winning isn’t all that easy. This season, she took George Mason to the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever and won a program record 27 games. Prior to taking the reins at George Mason, she won five consecutive MEAC titles at Bethune Cookman. Before that, she won a pair of NEC regular season titles at Mount St. Mary’s. She’s eight victories away from 400 career wins.
