Ruthy Hebard named TCU women’s basketball assistant coach 

“Ruthy’s going to jump in and she’ll train and work out with our kids,” TCU head coach Mark Campbell told The Next. “You’ve got young ladies that have dreams of getting to play in the WNBA, and to have someone that is literally currently doing it, to have them on your staff and to share their experiences and their wisdom, to compete against them and to see what that looks like, you can’t replicate that.”

Hebard was the No. 8 overall pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft. She had a stellar career at Oregon, where she won the Katrina McClain Award twice for the nation’s best power forward, was named an Associated Press First-Team All-American, and was a four-time All-Pac 12 selection. Campbell served as an assistant coach at Oregon for the duration of Hebard’s time there.

“It comes full circle,” Campbell said. “You get to coach these kids during their college journey, and now they come back and you get to be in the trenches with them on the coaching side.”

Hebard has played for the Chicago Sky for her entire WNBA career. During the the team’s championship season in 2021, she averaged 16.8 minutes per game in the regular season, scoring a career high 5.8 points per game and shooting 53% from the floor.

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In previous offseasons, Hebard played overseas with Nesibe Aydin, Passalacqua Ragusa and, most recently, KSC Szekszárd. She played for KSC last offseason but terminated her contract in February for personal reasons. She announced both her pregnancy and the birth of her son, Xzavier Reid, in May.

On July 9, only 12 weeks after his birth, she returned to the court for the Sky and was a strong post presence off the bench.

Along with Campbell, Hebard will join several other familiar faces at TCU. There’s Xavier Lopez, another former Oregon assistant who is now TCU’s associate head coach, and Nia Jackson, formerly Oregon’s director of creativity and now a TCU assistant coach. Former Ducks teammate Minyon Moore is also a TCU assistant coach and has been mentored by Campbell since moved from Oregon to Sacramento State, where she was charged with overseeing the team’s defensive strategy.

Campbell mentioned his excitement at being part of the next chapter of Hebard’s life as a mom and surrounding her with family. “Our staff is a family. Minyon Moore was a point guard on the team with Ruthy, Xavi coached Ruthy through her whole college career, and my family — I think it’s now 10 years that we’ve known Ruthy, since her high school days. So it’s like she’s got a built-in village here,” Campbell said.

In addition to Moore and Hebard, Campbell hired another former player, Nyara Sabally, as an assistant coach last season as she recovered from a knee injury and prepared for the WNBA season.

“If she wanted to, she could be an incredible coach someday,” Campbell said of Sabally. “… You had a WNBA player that was working out and practicing every day with our players [and] at the same time doing scouting reports and film sessions and coaching them up. So it was an incredible, priceless benefit to our players to our team and program to have her around for that season.”

This season, Oregon fans who had high hopes for a NCAA championship in 2020 will get to witness a reunion. Not only will TCU be coached by Campbell, Lopez, Jackson, Hebard and Moore, but former Oregon center Sedona Prince has also joined the Horned Frogs as a transfer.

Hebard is not the only current WNBA player on a college staff for the upcoming season. Natisha Hiedeman (Penn State), Katie Lou Samuelson (Vanderbilt), Rachel Banham (Minnesota) and Sabrina Ionescu (Oregon) will all be involved in the college game in various roles.