The Australian led her Moroccan club team to the quarterfinals of this year\u2019s Basketball Africa League after she had coached the Kenyan men\u2019s team to its first Afrobasket tournament in 28 years.<\/p>\n
When she left the Kenyan team to take over AS Sal\u00e9 in February, she became the first female head coach of a men\u2019s club team in the Arab world.<\/p>\n
Mills hopes to turn her collection of acquaintances, colleagues and distant supporters into something more formal, particularly in Africa, where she\u2019s spent the past decade coaching.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of trying to be part of the boys club, I think we\u2019re stronger making the girls club and building each other up,\u201d she said. \u201cWe don\u2019t spend enough time connecting with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mills cited Khardiata Diop, an assistant coach with the Senegalese team in the BAL regular season, as someone worthy of a head coaching job.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of other female coaches in Africa working with men\u2019s teams and with boys teams \u2014 it\u2019s an exciting time for female coaches in Africa,\u201d said Mills, who wants to return to a men\u2019s national team after the Moroccan season.<\/p>\n
Along with sharing coaching tips, a more formal network would help them identify job opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to create either a WhatsApp group or some kind of monthly chat where we all join in on Zoom and we stay connected. We can lift each other up that way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Getting the job doesn\u2019t mean problem solved; there are everyday obstacles like lower salaries compared to male colleagues. And Mills still regularly hears comments about her appearance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat kind of physical appraisal is entirely not necessary,\u201d Mills said.<\/p>\n
The BAL has networking in mind, too. Last weekend, it hosted a \u201cBAL4Her\u201d workshop featuring female leaders like NBA Africa vice president Gbemisola Abudu and Toronto Raptors scout Sarah Chan.<\/p>\n
Now in its second season, the BAL is an NBA-FIBA partnership styled on soccer\u2019s Champions League but lacking the star power. It is part of the NBA\u2019s long-term strategy to both develop the game and cash in on its popularity.<\/p>\n
Rosters are heavy with local players and imports though this season each team was assigned a prospect from the NBA Academy in Senegal. Sixteen-year-old Ulrich Chomche, a 6-foot-11 Cameroonian, averaged 1.7 blocks per game for FAP \u2014 Cameroon\u2019s entry \u2014 including three in a semifinal loss to Angolan team Petro de Luanda.<\/p>\n
AS Sal\u00e9\u2018s playoff run in the BAL ended early. Luanda eliminated them 102-89 last Saturday. The Angolan champions hit 19 3-pointers and withstood Sal\u00e9\u2019s fourth-quarter push.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe simply didn\u2019t follow our game plan,\u201d she said in the postgame news conference. \u201cWe talked about defense for two weeks. For us, that\u2019s where we lost the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tournament final between Luanda and Tunisian team US Monastir is on Saturday in Kigali, Rwanda.<\/p>\n
Ousmane Dram\u00e9, who had 19 points and 13 rebounds in Sal\u00e9\u2019s quarterfinal loss, said it\u2019s \u201cbreathtaking\u201d to see how hard Mills works.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the kind of environment I want to be around as a professional basketball player,\u201d said Dram\u00e9, who played at Quinnipiac and briefly in the G League.<\/p>\n
Sal\u00e9 now heads into its domestic league playoffs, after which Mills will pursue a switch back to a men\u2019s national team in contention for the FIBA World Cup next year. She hasn\u2019t considered a return to women\u2019s teams, she said. She has turned down invitations to coach at G League preseason camps.<\/p>\n
Mills has spoken to two African federations but declined to identify them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also about what kind of learning opportunity am I going to get. Whether it\u2019s an assistant coach to an exceptional head coach that I can learn from or taking over a team and becoming the first woman to coach at a World Cup,\u201d Mills said. \u201cI like breaking barriers, as you know.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Basketball coach Liz Mills has again shown that women can successfully coach men\u2019s teams. Now she wants to help other women join the ranks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":9143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4],"tags":[7,14,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-9146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"category-sports","9":"tag-apie-project","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n