COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina women’s basketball family tree extends far beyond Colonial Life Arena. On Wednesday, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference provided the latest reminder of that reach, announcing its 2025-2026 award winners — and a former Gamecock left her mark on the list.
Kelly Morrone, who wore the garnet and black from 1999 to 2004 under then-head coach Susan Walvius, was named the MAAC Coach of the Year — a recognition that caps a remarkable arc from program-defining player to award-winning head coach.
Building Something Real at Merrimack
Morrone is in her sixth season leading the Merrimack Warriors women’s basketball program, and the trajectory she has established tells the story of a coach who knows how to build. When she arrived, the program was navigating one of the most difficult transitions in college athletics — moving from Division II to Division I competition. Managing that kind of institutional shift requires not just tactical ability, but vision, patience, and the capacity to recruit and develop players for a program still establishing its identity at the highest level.
That foundation is now paying dividends. Merrimack finished the 2025-2026 regular season with an 18-11 overall record and a 15-5 mark in MAAC play — good for the third-best record in the conference and a strong case for a 20-win season if the Warriors can advance in the MAAC Tournament. The program earned a first-round bye and enters the quarterfinals as the No. 3 seed, set to face No. 6 seed Mount St. Mary’s following Thursday’s opening round games.
For a program that was playing Division II basketball not long ago, reaching this level of MAAC relevance in Morrone’s sixth season is a genuine coaching achievement — and precisely the kind of sustained, structural growth the Coach of the Year award is designed to recognize.
A Coaching Resume Built Across Two Decades
Morrone’s path to this moment was never a straight line. Before arriving at Merrimack, she spent seven years as the head coach at John Carroll University, building credibility as a program builder at the mid-major level. Prior to her first head coaching role, she accumulated assistant coaching experience at William & Mary, Rhode Island, Davidson, and Buffalo — a diverse set of programs that gave her exposure to different systems, recruiting environments, and coaching philosophies.
That breadth of experience matters. Coaches who spend time in multiple programs and conferences before leading their own tend to be more adaptable, more resourceful, and more capable of solving problems that others haven’t encountered before. Morrone’s varied background as an assistant, combined with her longevity as a head coach, reflects the kind of well-rounded developmental path that produces durable coaching careers.
The Gamecock Foundation: Where It All Began
To understand Morrone the coach, it helps to understand Morrone the player. At South Carolina, she was not a role player or a complementary piece — she was a cornerstone. A multi-year captain and starter, Morrone was one of the program’s most reliable offensive weapons as a combo guard with a gifted shooting touch from deep.
The numbers she left behind remain extraordinary. Her 238 three-pointers rank third in program history. More impressively, her 111 three-pointers made in SEC play stand alone — no Gamecock, in the history of the program, has ever made more in conference competition. That record has held through an era that includes some of the most celebrated players women’s college basketball has ever seen. She also compiled 339 assists across her career, placing her just outside the program’s all-time top 10 — a mark that underscores her playmaking instincts alongside her scoring ability.
Morrone played under Susan Walvius, who has since transitioned into a role as an assistant under Dawn Staley at South Carolina. The through-line from Walvius to Morrone is a meaningful one — a coaching relationship that began on the practice floor in Columbia and has clearly left a lasting imprint on how Morrone approaches the game and the profession.
A Program-Defining Era at South Carolina
Morrone’s playing career coincided with one of the most significant stretches in South Carolina women’s basketball history — a period that laid the groundwork for everything that followed. The Gamecocks made back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances in the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 seasons, with Morrone as a key contributor to both runs.
The 2001-2002 season was particularly historic. South Carolina won 25 games that year — a program record that still stands outside of the Dawn Staley era — and advanced to the Elite Eight for the first time in program history. Morrone was part of the team that broke that barrier, a distinction that connects her permanently to one of South Carolina’s landmark moments as a program.
That context matters beyond nostalgia. Programs don’t build championship cultures overnight. The players who pushed USC to its first Elite Eight in 2002 helped establish that making deep tournament runs was possible in Columbia — a belief system that Staley’s program has since transformed into sustained national dominance. Morrone was part of planting those seeds.
A Legacy That Travels
What Morrone’s MAAC Coach of the Year honor ultimately reflects is the quiet, powerful way that great programs reproduce themselves. South Carolina doesn’t just develop players — it develops leaders, competitors, and thinkers who carry the program’s standards into everything they do after leaving Columbia.
Morrone absorbed those standards under Walvius, took them into a career that has spanned multiple institutions and decades, and is now applying them at Merrimack — turning a program that was playing Division II basketball into a MAAC contender worthy of postseason recognition. That is what genuine program influence looks like.
Dawn Staley’s South Carolina program commands the national spotlight right now, and rightfully so. But the story of what this program has produced — and continues to produce — extends far beyond the current roster. Kelly Morrone’s Coach of the Year award is the latest chapter in a much longer story.
The MAAC Tournament begins Thursday. No. 3 seed Merrimack faces No. 6 seed Mount St. Mary’s in the quarterfinals.
Let me know if you’d like any section adjusted, expanded, or if you’d like a clickbait title to go with this one.
