Coaching Carousel Update: UW-Superior's Emily Carpenter takes over at Knox
Carpenter will lead the Prairie Fire after taking UW-Superior to the NCAA Tournament
For the second time this offseason, a 2025 NCAA Tournament team is looking for its next head coach. UW-Superior’s Emily Carpenter, who led the Yellowjackets to their first tournament berth since 2018 this past spring, was announced as Knox’s new head coach in a release late on Wednesday morning.
Carpenter, who played basketball and softball at UWS before venturing into coaching, wrapped up her third year in Superior with a UMAC title and a 17-11 record. She will now take on a new challenge further south with a Knox program that showed signs of an upward trajectory the last few years, including a 19-win season in 2023-24.
"We had an incredibly competitive pool of candidates, but Emily really rose to the top," Knox Director of Athletics Justin Newell said in the announcement. "Her background as a strong Division III competitor and her success coaching at her alma mater made her stand out. We believe she brings the experience, energy, and vision to help take Knox women's basketball to the next level. I am excited for Coach Carpenter to join the Prairie Fire family and hope the community welcomes her to Galesburg."
Carpenter turned around what had been a struggling UWS program during her first head coaching job. Appointed as an interim HC in August 2022, she took the Yellowjackets to an 8-6 UMAC record, then made a massive jump in Year 2, going 18-9 overall with a near-perfect 13-1 mark in conference action. The program broke through with a trip to the national tournament this past winter—UWS’ first trip to the NCAA postseason since Carpenter’s senior year—and captured its fourth UMAC Tournament crown in a 53-47 win over Northwestern (MN) at home.
"I am extremely grateful for my time these past three years at UW-Superior,” Carpenter said in a release from UWS. “I am very thankful for the entire women's basketball team, the athletics department and the Superior community for everything they have given me during my time here. It was a tough decision as these student-athletes mean the world to me and I'm very blessed to have coached such amazing young ladies. I will forever cherish the memories we have made together on and off the court.”
Knox becomes the fourth program this offseason that has hired a current D3 head coach to guide its program, joining Cedar Crest, Keystone, and Hartford. Carpenter is one of two coaches at the present moment who head coached in the 2025 D3 Tournament and will be on the sidelines of a new institution next season, with McMurry’s Drew Long (now at Houston Christian) being the other.
I think this is a smart hire by Knox. As I said yesterday on X, I always respect coaches who figure out how to do more with less. That looks different at different places, but the truth is that recruiting to Superior, Wisconsin is fairly difficult. Its location at the top western corner of Wisconsin, bordered by Lake Superior, makes it both isolated and very cold during the winter months. Yet, she brought in multiple players that elevated UWS’ program, including Charlotte Ferstyl—who had 12 points against Whitman in the NCAA Tournament—and retained the talent on campus when she arrived, with players like Elise Besonen and Katie Dobson. That piece is crucial to building consistent success, and I honestly think learning to win in that type of environment sets up a lot of coaches for achievement further down the road.
UW-Superior noted that a “national search” for its next head coach will begin immediately. The Yellowjackets are set to return three starters from their 2024-25 squad along with rising senior Kylee Hewitt, who started three games at forward last season.
At Knox, Carpenter’s first team in Galesburg should include some returning talent from last year’s squad. Leading scorer Bria Medina will be a junior (18.2 PPG in 2024-25), and three of Knox’s five starters from last season are eligible to return in 2025-26.
» Knox press release (link)
» UW-Superior press release (link)
Spalding hires D1 assistant
Spalding’s new head coach won’t have to go far for her first career D3 job, as the Golden Eagles announced Raven Merriweather as the program’s next leader in an announcement on Wednesday. For the last four seasons, starting in 2021, Merriweather served as an assistant with the Bellarmine women’s basketball program, whose campus is just 12 miles away from Spalding in Louisville, Kentucky.
Merriweather became part of Bellarmine’s build towards success in its early years as a Division I program, transitioning up from D2 only a year prior to her joining the staff. Following four seasons below .500 since the transition, Bellarmine broke through with an 18-15 season this past year, winning an ASUN Tournament game for the first time. In an opening round contest against Jacksonville, Bellarmine won an 80-79 thriller in overtime, marking the program’s first postseason victory of any kind in D1.
A Bellarmine alum herself, she played for the Knights during a run of consecutive appearances in the D2 national tournament in 2016 and 2017, and graduated in 2018 with the ninth-most career points in program history (1,420).
Spalding, who finished 9-9 in the SLIAC in each of the last two seasons, is aiming at its first season in conference play above .500 since 2019-20. Merriweather is expected to inherit a squad that returns four rising seniors, all of whom started at least 20 games a season ago. That includes Zaneiya Batiste, whose 15.6 rebounds/game led the SLIAC in 2024-25.
Muskingum open
An OAC job is open for the first time in this cycle, and it’s a familiar one. Muskingum, who conducted a coaching search around this time last summer, is once again looking for its next head coach with Alison McCarthy’s departure. The Fighting Muskies went 4-21, 2-16 OAC this past year. The program will now have had three different head coaches in three years, and four different coaches since 2021-22.
I am continuing to work on stories and other content through this summer, including one on the impact D3 women’s basketball players and coaches have had on the rising sport of flag football at the college level. So stay tuned for more from The Scoop on D3 Women’s Hoops in the weeks to come!