The 2009-10 season will mark head coach Mike Petersen's sixth year at the helm of the Wake Forest women's basketball program. The 2008-09 season was the first year that Petersen coached a Wake Forest team made up entirely of players recruited by his coaching staff. And what a season it was. Wake Forest began the season by setting a new win-streak record, starting 12-0. The win-streak included two victories over Southeastern Conference foes Mississippi and South Carolina. In January, the nation began to recognize Wake Forest's achievements and the Demon Deacons were voted into the Top 25 for the first time since the 1987-88 season. The Demon Deacons finished the season with 19 wins, the second most in program history, and earned a berth in the 2009 Women's National Invitation Tournament. It marked just the third time that a Wake Forest women's basketball team had earned a spot in postseason action past the ACC Tournament. Mike Petersen is now the only coach in Wake Forest history to guide the Deacons to two postseason appearances. When Petersen began working with the Demon Deacons in 2004, he guided the team to its first winning season in 14 years, ending the campaign with a third-round trip to the WNIT to mark the program's first non-conference post-season appearance since 1988. The following season, Petersen continued to build on the new foundations, leading the squad to a 12-16 overall record. The Deacs finished 3-13 in the ACC, which proved to be arguably the toughest conference in the nation. At the end of the season, Petersen signed a seven-year contract extension which will keep him in the Wake Forest head coaching position until at least 2013, allowing time to build a solid program that can be highly competitive on both the conference and national stage. In 2007-08 The Demon Deacons finished 12-2 in non-conference play, the team's best opening mark since 1987. WFU received several votes for the AP Poll early in the season when it landed an upset over 10th-ranked Texas A&M at the Paradise Jam Tournament in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Wake Forest went on to take the St. John's division title at the event with wins over Indiana and Wichita State. In five years, Petersen has coached several athletes that have garnered honors from other ACC coaches. In 2009 Alex Tchangoue and Corinne Groves wrapped up stellar four-year careers at Wake Forest. Both earned places in the 600 rebound club and 1,000 point club in Demon Deacon record book. Tchangoue was voted to the ACC Honorable Mention team by the league's head coaches. Cotelia Bond-Young had a standout season for her final year with the Deacs in 2005-06. Bond-Young earned third team All-ACC honors after leading the conference in three-pointers and finished as the Deacs' fifth all-time leading scorer and the program's all-time leader in three-pointers made. Liz Strunk also had a solid campaign in 2005-06, as she joined Bond-Young in Wake Forest's 1,000-point club. Freshman Deirdre Naughton was named to the ACC All-Freshman team and received conference Rookie of the Week honors twice. The Demon Deacons continued to set new attendance marks under Petersen in 2005-06. Wake Forest drew a record-breaking crowd on Jan. 27 against North Carolina, as 5,342 fans were in attendance. The Deacs drew over 3,700 fans to five different games. Petersen's outgoing on-court personality and the Deacons fast-paced style of play is a favorite among Winston-Salem's sports fans. Petersen arrived in Winston-Salem after five years with the Minnesota men's basketball program, serving as associate head coach for four seasons under Don Monson. Petersen was involved in every aspect of the Minnesota program, but primarily with individual player development, scheduling, offensive play-calling, opponent scouting and game-planning. He directed an offense that led the Big Ten in scoring and field goal percentage in 2001-02 and was second in scoring offense in 2002-03. Petersen also worked extensively with future NBA lottery pick Joel Przybilla -- who improved his scoring from 6.5 ppg as a freshman to 17.2 ppg as a sophomore. Petersen joined the Golden Gophers in 1999 after three seasons as the head coach of the TCU women's basketball program from 1996-99. Inheriting a program that went 3-52 in the two years prior to his arrival, Petersen guided the Horned Frogs to the program's first-ever winning season, first-ever conference tournament victory and a then school record 16 wins in 1999. In his first full season with the Horned Frogs, he landed a recruiting class ranked in the top 25 by the Blue Star Report. Petersen was also instrumental as TCU raised its average attendance from 250 to 1,880 -- an increase of more than 750 percent. Prior to taking over at TCU, Petersen was the women's head coach at New Mexico State University from 1992-96. Similar to TCU, he inherited a program that went 30-32 the previous two seasons and did not return a single starter for the 1992-93 season. In his four seasons with the Aggies, Petersen recorded three consecutive 20-win seasons and compiled an 81-38 (.681) overall record and a 53-19 (.736) record in Big West Conference games. Petersen, who led the Aggies to their first-ever Big West Conference title in 1995, was responsible for the development of 1995-96 All-American and WNBA player, Anita Maxwell. Not only did he sign a top 25 recruiting class, but Petersen also helped the Aggies lead the Big West Conference in attendance all four years. Petersen spent three years as an assistant coach with the men's program at the University of Oregon prior to his stint at New Mexico State. While with the Ducks, Petersen coached former Minnesota Timberwolves' guard Terrell Brandon, making him the first college basketball coach to have coached both an NBA player and WNBA player. In 1985, Petersen accepted the head women's coaching position at Gonzaga University. During his first season, Petersen led the Zags to a 21-10 record and missed the NAIA National Tournament by a single game. After an 11-16 record in their transition year into NCAA Division I athletics, Gonzaga shocked the experts by winning the West Coast Conference title in its inaugural season in the conference -- only their second year at the NCAA Division I level. Before moving into the coaching ranks, Petersen enjoyed a stellar college playing career. He began at the College of the Redwoods in Eureka, Calif. After two seasons, he transferred to Northwest Christian College, an NAIA school in Eugene, Ore. In his junior year, Petersen helped the Crusaders to a 22-7 record and the Pacific Northwest Collegiate Conference title. His senior year, he blossomed and was named to the Little All-America team. He finished his career among the top 10 all-time leading scorers in school history in just two full seasons. Petersen stayed on as an assistant men's coach at Northwest Christian while he completed his undergraduate work in Biblical studies in 1983. After more than two and a half years with the NCC program, Petersen left for Oregon in the middle of the 1983 season to become an assistant coach for the women's team. During his season and a half, the Ducks won the NorPac title and earned an NCAA tournament berth in 1984. In September 2007 Northwest Christian College announced its inaugural Athletics Hall of Fame with Petersen being one of three inductees. Petersen, 51, and his wife of 31 years, Patty, have two sons, Riley (21), who is a sophomore at Wake Forest, and Jake (17). |
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