As a fresh season approaches, a new face emerges to lead our women’s basketball team in head coach Renee Jimenez.

With the team heading into the California Collegiate Athletic Association, Jimenez expects a quick turnaround from last year’s 14-14 record, saying it will be ”A one year turnaround for us”. And with her overall track record of 125-71, it seems like a real possibility.

Before arriving at Cal State San Marcos, Jimenez took control of two mediocre programs at Cal State Monterey Bay and Cal State San Bernardino where she changed their fortunes. Monterey Bay reached a number one ranking in the western region with Jimenez. San Bernardino went from a 9-19 record to a 19-9 record in the two years with Jimenez at the helm.

During Jimenez’s playing career at San Francisco State, she was mostly an offensive player and finished as the school’s all-time 3-point scorer. Her coaching philosophy of “Team defense wins games” comes as a pleasant surprise.

When asked about the style of play, she said, “It’s funny because in high school and college I was an offensive player and I didn’t play any defense, so when people watch us play on defense it comes as a surprise because it just wasn’t important to me when I was a player.”

As to where she picked up that playing philosophy, she said that her time with “Tara VanDerveer at Stanford and Beth Burns at San Diego state really instilled defense and that is where my philosophy changed along the way when I was a young coach.”

A coach of her caliber could have virtually gone anywhere she liked, so why San Marcos?

“To me, I think San Marcos is a sleeping giant really, and the fact that they are going into the CCAA, the sports center being built, because most CCAA everything looks like a high school gym. And really the high academics – kind of like the best of both worlds,” said Jimenez.

Academics really are important to her and the coaching staff as her time at San Bernardino proved, with a team GPA of 3.04 when she left as opposed to a 2.5 when she started. Jimenez had a straight forward reason for that.

“[The players] are here to be students first, and there’s not a professional future for these young women, like there is for the guys,” said Jimenez. “At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what we do on the court as opposed to the classroom because these girls are going to go out and have real jobs.”
“This team has had some success in NAIA but Division 2 is a whole different beast. The CCAA is probably the toughest basketball conference in the country. It should be an easy place to recruit too; it’s going to be great for the fans, and great for the community. I’m hoping this could be a really long stay for me, I would like to stay here for the rest of my career.”