Six Hundred and Two. That’s the number of wins UNCG Women’s Basketball Head Coach Lynne Agee accumulated over her 33 years as a collegiate head coach. As of April 2015, she ranked 54th in all-time wins across all women’s basketball coaches (NCAA, AIAW, and NAIA levels).
Agee found success in her very first coaching job at William Fleming High School in Roanoke, Va — her alma mater. In seven years, her team’s record was 94-16 — good enough for seven league titles, four district championships, and one regional title.
In 1978, Agee began her collegiate career at Roanoke College, accepting the head coaching position for the women’s basketball program. In three years at Roanoke, the team achieved a 46-23 record that included an outstanding effort in the 1980-81 season. The Lady Maroons went 21-6, won the Virginia Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) Division III state title and qualified for the AIAW national playoffs.
In 1981, Agee arrived at UNCG and had an amazing first season. The team finished with a 25-3 record and a trip to the inaugural NCAA Division III tournament, finishing as runners-up to Elizabethtown in a close 67-66 overtime loss.
The 1986-87 season brought a 27-3 record, which included a historic 24 game winning streak. A 27-6 record in the following season ended with UNCG finishing third in the national tournament.
UNCG next moved up to Division II for three years. Under Agee’s leadership, UNCG achieved a 55-24 record and was ranked nationally each year.
Agee found success at every level. In her first year at Division I (1991-92), UNCG’s record was 21-6. She was named Big South Conference Co-Coach of the Year for the 1992-93 season. Under Agee’s coaching, the Spartans were dominant in the Big South Conference for 5 years, boasting an impressive 70-12 conference record.
In 1997-98, UNCG earned its first appearance in the NCAA Division I tournament after achieving a 21-9 record and winning the Southern Conference tournament championship.
Agee’s accomplishments are many. She was the first women’s basketball coach to lead a team to the NCAA tournament in all three divisions. She led UNCG to nine NCAA berths and one WNIT appearance. UNCG won 13 regular season conference titles, seven league tournament titles, and won 20 games or more in 16 of Agee’s 30 seasons. She won Southern Conference Coach of the year two times, in 1998-99 and 2001-02. She coached six All-Americans while at UNCG. She was the first active coach to be enshrined in UNCG’s Athletics Hall of Fame (2004) and was inducted into the Guilford County Sports Hall of Fame in 2008.
Agee retired in 2011. Her 602 collegiate wins made her, at that time, just the 21st NCAA Division I coach to reach the 600-win plateau. UNCG also named the court in Fleming Gymnasium in Agee’s honor in 2011.
In announcing her retirement, Agee stated, “I never intended to stay 30 years. I honestly thought that I would try to move on up the ladder and applied at several places and interviewed at several places. But then we hit the point where the university decided to elevate our program. When it started, I was presented with incredible opportunities and challenges as a basketball coach to take my program from Division III immediately into Division II and that scholarship structure, and then within three years, we took our program into a Division I level. So that challenge to do that and to try and be successful in that scenario in a five-year period was just a challenge I couldn’t refuse. I decided to stay and commit to it because I could create my own personal Division I program, with my name on it. I was not going somewhere else and taking over someone else’s program. That was really special to me. To be able to do that successfully was just incredible.”
Article by Scott Hinshaw
