USF coach Fernandez, who faces UM in NCAA women’s tourney Friday, has deep Miami ties
One of the first texts University of Miami women’s basketball coach Katie Meier received on Selection Sunday was from Jose Fernandez, the longtime coach at the University of South Florida.
The Hurricanes and USF Bulls wound up as first-round opponents in the NCAA Women’s Tournament and will play each other Friday in Columbia, South Carolina (11:30 a.m., ESPN2). Fernandez is a Miami native with deep South Florida coaching roots, so he and Meier have known each other for many years.
He got his start as a student assistant for the Miami-Dade College men’s team and went on to coach the boys at Sunset High and work as an assistant for the Barry University men’s team. In 1996 he took his first job coaching girls, at Lourdes Academy, and led the Bobcats to an 83-16 record and a state runner-up finish in 1998.
Fernandez then coached the Barry University women’s team and was hired by USF in 2000.
“Jose and I were texting each other at the same time when the bracket came out,” Meier said at a news conference. “We are very familiar. I actually had a symposium back in 2017 where I invited some coaches I really respected to Miami. We hosted it, put them up in a hotel, brought in some administrators, brought in a guest speaker, and really had like a X and O.
“We shared everything, and Jose was one of those coaches. We scrimmage them every year except for these last two COVID years … tons of respect. I’m really happy for all the state of Florida. What a representation of all of our universities that are in the tournament this year.”
The last time the Hurricanes and Bulls played in an official game was at the 2011 Great Alaska Shootout in Anchorage. Miami won 92-72.
“I remember my AD going, ‘You’re going to Anchorage to a game you could drive to?’ ” Meier said.
Fernandez said: “I’ve known Katie for a long time and she’s a friend. I think we have a great amount of respect for each other’s program. We’ve served on NCAA committees together, WBCA committees together. It’s just kind of interesting that you have six teams from the state of Florida and four of them are meeting in the first round.”
Both UM (20-12) and USF (24-8) are loaded with international talent. The ninth-seeded Bulls have players from Cameroon, Belgium, Spain, Canada, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Croatia and Venezuela. Eighth-seeded Miami’s roster includes players from France, Sweden, Spain and Croatia.
“I personally played on a lot of national team competitions against all of those players, so we’re pretty familiar with players itself, but not with the system,” said UM guard Karla Erjavec, who is from Croatia. “We haven’t faced them this year. I think it’ll be a fun game.”
USF player Maria Alvarez was a high school teammate of UM’s Kelsey Marshall at Miami Country Day, so they know each other well.
“I texted her, DM’d her on Instagram, it’s going to be a fun one,” Marshall said. “We’re not on the same team this time, but we’re competing against each other so it should be fun.”
Meier, known for her passion and energy, said she has been “a bear” the past few days, getting her team prepared for the game.
“I’ve totally been a bear the last couple days to increase the internal pressure within my team, I put them in a circle, I said, ‘Listen inside this circle there has got to be so much pressure, because when we leave and go play somewhere else, the external pressure is going to try to push us in and we’re not going to let it,’ ’’ Meier said.
“All of us need to push the internal pressure to keep us in the zone we were in the last time we played. So, I’m tired because I’ve been mad woman just really trying to get after them. They know and I know and the staff knows what it takes to push this team to get that grit and get that toughness, and that’s where I want to be when we tip tomorrow.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 6:11 PM.