DURHAM, N.C. — A little over a month into her tenure as head women’s basketball coach at North Carolina Central University, Olivia Gaines has not slowed down for a single moment. She arrived on campus last Monday, inherited a program with a deeply complicated history, and immediately began doing what winners do: assessing, building, and believing — all at the same time.
“It’s been chaotic, but it’s been really, really good,” Gaines told The State. “I actually just got into the office last Monday. … These kids I didn’t sign, so now it’s about building relationships with kids, just trying to get to know them on a personal level, basketball level. Watching a lot of film. I’m just trying to figure out pretty much the best pieces I can bring in to help us be successful. So it’s been a grind, even the grind away from home. It’s almost like working during COVID.”
That final comparison is more revealing than it might initially appear. Coaching during COVID required building relationships without physical presence, manufacturing culture through screens and phone calls, and finding ways to motivate players in the most isolating environment imaginable. The fact that Gaines reaches for that analogy is not a complaint — it is a badge of honor. She has done this kind of work before. She knows how to build in difficult conditions.
A Hire That Took Time — and Happened at the Right Moment
N.C. Central announced Gaines as its next head coach on May 8, nearly two months after the Eagles fired Terrence Baxter and news broke that Gaines was available. The timeline, while longer than ideal, ultimately delivered the right person to the right program at the right moment.
The sequence of events that brought Gaines to Durham began with a firing that, on its surface, looked like a setback. After putting together a successful two-year stint at Allen University — a Division-II HBCU in Columbia — the Yellow Jackets relieved Gaines of her duties just two weeks after the season ended. The university never publicized the coaching change on its athletics website or social media channels, and no announcement was made about her replacement, Kevin Herod, being hired. Allen said it was “grateful” for Gaines’ contributions “but has decided to move in a different direction.”
Asked to explain what looked from the outside like a genuinely surprising firing given her results, Gaines chose her words deliberately. “I had three different athletic directors at Allen and this time around just didn’t mesh,” she said. “We just decided to part ways, if that makes sense.”
It makes complete sense — and Gaines’ ability to speak about it without bitterness reveals significant emotional maturity. She did not leave Allen angry. She left with 36 wins, a program record for overall victories in a single season, a program record for conference wins, the school’s first SIAC Player of the Year, and its first SIAC Freshman of the Year. She left that program better than she found it — which is exactly what coaches of integrity do.
“I’ll remember winning,” Gaines said of her time at Allen. “I think you want to always take the good and just go with that. Everything I touch, I want to leave it in the next person’s hands even better. So, I think I’ve definitely done that. I think it should set up for them to be successful moving forward. I’m always wishing every program that I’ve touched the best of luck.”
A Winner Everywhere She Has Been
The résumé Gaines carries into Durham is worth examining in full, because it is the kind of track record that should generate genuine optimism about what she can build at the Division-I level.
She played under Dawn Staley at South Carolina — an education in winning culture that is arguably the best apprenticeship available in women’s college basketball. She then went 49-5 as head coach across Richard Bland College and USC Salkehatchie at the Division-III level. She followed that with 36 wins at Allen across two seasons at the Division-II level. Each stop represented a step up in competition, and at each stop she produced a winning record, developed players, and elevated the programs she inherited.
That pattern is not coincidence. It is character.
“I think winners win through and through. So I’m going to figure out a way,” Gaines said — a statement that sounds simple but carries the full weight of a coaching career built on executing exactly that promise.
The Challenge at NCCU Is Real — And So Is the Belief
Gaines is not walking into a favorable situation, and she is clear-eyed about that reality. She inherits seven returning players and five newcomers on a team that went 9-20 last season. N.C. Central has recorded a winning record just once in the last 18 seasons since its move to Division I in 2008. The program has never won the MEAC Tournament and has yet to make an NCAA Tournament appearance. In a conference increasingly dominated by Norfolk State and Howard — who have played each other in each of the last five MEAC Tournament championship games — carving out a foothold will require patience, precision recruiting, and relentless development work.
But Gaines is not framing the task as an obstacle. She is framing it as an opportunity.
“It might be difficult, but I’m also used to difficult challenges. I think, years to come, we will be successful,” she said. “I have to stand on that. I’m big on manifesting. Twenty-win season? It’s not far-fetched whatsoever. Can it be done? Yes. I don’t want to take a long time to win basketball games.”
The 20-win target is not an arbitrary number. For context, NCCU has only won double-digit games six times in its entire Division-I history, the most recent being 16 wins in the 2023-24 season. Getting to 20 wins would be a program-defining milestone — and Gaines is treating it not as a long-term aspiration but as a near-term expectation. That standard-setting, delivered with humility and conviction simultaneously, is precisely the tone a program that has been losing for nearly two decades needs from its leader.
Her recruiting philosophy is equally direct. “You’ve got to get the talent,” Gaines said of competing in the MEAC. “And you want to get kids who want to be here at Central, that’s the biggest thing. But I know who the big dogs are. I’m a very humble person, but also I’m a winner.”
That combination — humility and competitive ferocity — is the dual quality that makes coaches genuinely dangerous. She is not going to overestimate what she has. But she is also not going to accept the limitations of what has come before her.
The Dawn Staley Connection: A Mentor, and Maybe a Future Opponent
Perhaps the most intriguing thread running through Gaines’ story is her enduring relationship with the coach who shaped her. She played under Dawn Staley at South Carolina, considers Staley a mentor to this day, and maintains what she describes as a “great” relationship with the Hall of Fame coach. N.C. Central was actually one of South Carolina’s 20 opponents last season — a loss for the Eagles at Colonial Life Arena — and with Gaines now running the NCCU program, the possibility of a future matchup between mentor and mentee has become more than hypothetical.
When asked directly whether she could see a South Carolina vs. N.C. Central game materializing down the road, Gaines did not hedge:
“I really do. So, stay tuned.”
Two words. Maximum intrigue. The student facing the master on the biggest stage she has yet occupied would be one of the better storylines in women’s college basketball — and Gaines clearly relishes the idea rather than fearing it.
The Bottom Line
Olivia Gaines is one month into the hardest job she has ever had, in a program that has spent nearly two decades building a losing tradition, in a conference dominated by programs with deeper roots and more recent momentum. By any objective measure, the challenge is formidable.
But Gaines has been formidable everywhere she has gone. She was let go by a school that did not deserve her, landed in a better situation because of it, and arrived in Durham with the same conviction and competitive identity that has defined every stop of her career.
N.C. Central is a program that has been waiting for someone to believe in it. Olivia Gaines believes — and if her track record is any indication, it will not be long before the wins follow.
