BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — Jonathan Tsipis grew up in Ohio, the youngest of five children, his daily routine defined by basketball.
His father, Lou, is a Naismith Hall of Famer as a referee who starred as a post player for the Greek national team at the tender age of 15.
His brother, Dean, played four seasons at NCAA Division III Case Western Reserve University.
His sister, LuAnn, was a letterwinner in basketball, track and volleyball at NCAA Division III Baldwin-Wallace University.
So the concept of Jonathan Tsipis carving out a career in the field, becoming the head women's basketball coach at Wisconsin, has been in the works for quite a while.
"I like to say I never had a babysitter growing up," he said. "I went to one of my brother's games, my sister's games (or) my dad was refereeing or coaching."
Tsipis glanced around the nearly empty practice gym at the Nicholas-Johnson Pavilion on Wednesday afternoon and smiled.
"This is the place I feel most comfortable," he said.
Tsipis' diverse resume would seem to bear him out.
He started out coaching on the men's side, working first alongside Mike Krzyzewski as an undergraduate assistant at Duke in 1995-96 -- a notable debut given Tsipis graduated from Tobacco Road rival North Carolina with a degree in pharmacy -- before moving to Cornell, Le Moyne and Elon.
Tsipis transitioned to the women's side at Notre Dame from 2003 to '12, cultivating a reputation as an elite recruiter and strategist while helping the Fighting Irish reach the NCAA title game in 2011 and '12.
Tsipis (pronounced Sip-iss) followed that up by quickly building George Washington into a force. GW had three consecutive losing seasons before it won the last two Atlantic 10 titles and qualified for the NCAA tournament.
Barry Alvarez, the Wisconsin director of athletics, said Tsipis came highly recommended by Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw.
"Can't miss. Can do it all," was her summation to Alvarez. "Well prepared. He's the guy. He'll get your program straight in a hurry."
Alvarez said he liked the fact Tsipis had such a prominent role -- associate head coach and recruiting coordinator -- in an elite program like Notre Dame.
"He knows what it takes to play at a championship level, and then you go out and do it on your own," Alvarez said. "I liked the fact he went out and took his own team and built it.
"He's a guy, I understand, that will get out in the community and sell the program. He was everything I was looking for."
Tsipis, 43, will be the seventh women's basketball coach in Wisconsin history, but its first male. He was hired to replace Bobbie Kelsey, who was dismissed after five straight losing seasons.
"I'm honored to be the first male," Tsipis said. "You don't have to go too far around campus to see the success other male coaches in women's sports have had here at Wisconsin."
Tsipis mentioned Mark Johnson, who has led the women's hockey team to four NCAA titles, and Kelly Sheffield, who guided the volleyball team to the national championship match in 2014.
"When you look for a coach, you look for the best person available, male or female," Alvarez said. "We interviewed both. This is who we felt is the best fit for us."
Tsipis said his transition from the men's side to the women's side was driven by circumstance. An acquaintance, current Iowa coach Fran McCaffrey, once served as an assistant at Notre Dame and married one of McGraw's former players.
McGraw was looking for a male to be on her staff and asked McCaffrey if he knew anyone whose energies might fit the role. He suggested Tsipis.
"It absolutely was my niche," Tsipis said.
Tsipis said he was attracted to UW in part because, like Cornell, Duke, Notre Dame and George Washington, it places a premium on academics.
Tsipis and his wife, Leigh, have two children, Emily and Joshua. Becoming a father put his profession under a brighter light.
"It became the most eye-opening when I had a daughter and those opportunities that I wanted for her are the same things that I think each and every player that I've had a chance to coach, I'm trying to get to that same place," Tsipis said.
Tsipis said he didn't spend a lot of time recruiting in Wisconsin while he was at Notre Dame, but he noticed that a host of talented players from the state were playing somewhere other than UW.
What was his view of the Badgers from afar?
"I've seen Wisconsin, in so many other sports, win championships," he said. "I kept saying, 'Why can't Wisconsin (women's) basketball do that same thing?'"
Tsipis raved about the facilities and student-athlete support system at UW, but didn't have an answer for why its women's basketball program has struggled to find a consistent vein of achievement.
"The first part always starts with making sure you have the right kids here," he said. "Not only do you want to have highly-talented and highly-motivated players, you have to have the right mix."
That process helps explain why Tsipis went recruiting Wednesday before he held his first-ever team meeting with the Badgers.
A month-long NCAA recruiting window to contact prospects closes Thursday and Tsipis wanted to make as much use of the time period as possible
"There's not going to be, to me, a place that works harder in the nation to put women's basketball in a championship caliber," he said.
Tsipis left no doubt as to his top priority.
"To make sure that the best high school and AAU girls' basketball players understand this is a place that is going to be special and going to compete for championships," he said.
"That starts with the outreach with the high school coaches and the AAU coaches. It's going to be an open-door policy -- practice, shoot-arounds, games -- as much as we can have that involvement.
"Wisconsin is just a state that prides itself on blue-collar work and I love that fact that kids would have that option to say, 'I can go to Wisconsin and write the next history of women's basketball.'"
Tsipis said he's still in the process of assembling his staff. Some may come from the pool of assistants at GW. Some will be off his short list of options.
"We're going to give a great experience to the basketball student-athletes here," he said. "I happen to be a male. They're going to be surrounded with positive female role models and different personalities.
"The players have different needs and personalities and I want to make sure all of us can pull that out of each player so that at the end of their four years they've had this amazing experience."
