In what many believed was her final chance, Bobbie Kelsey just simply couldn’t find the right formula to get her Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball team going in the right direction. The Badgers finished 13th in the Big Ten with a 3-15 record, and compiled an overall record of 7-22 in her final season at Wisconsin.
On Friday, athletic director Barry Alvarez pulled the plug on the five-year Bobbie Kelsey era and announced that she would not be retained.
“It’s my job and the sports administrator’s job to see the programs progress and that they’re being run properly and that things are being done the right way,” Alvarez said, via the school’s athletic site.
“Bobbie has a lot of good qualities. Her assistants have a lot of good qualities. They put a lot of hard work in.
“But in the end you have to have some results, and we just didn’t have the results and the progress that we needed. We felt at that point we needed a change and shake things up and try and get the program back on track.”
Kelsey finished her five-year tenure with a 47-100 (.320) overall record and was just 19-65 (.226) in Big Ten play. Her teams were also a dismal 30-40 at the Kohl Center during that five-year span.
Injuries played a big part in the struggles of her program early on, but it became apparent that things weren’t heading in the right direction even when all the pieces were in place over much of the past two seasons.
For her part, Kelsey is grateful for her time in Madison and for the experiences gained with at the University of Wisconsin.
“They’ve been great to work for,” Kelsey said. “I’ve enjoyed my time at Wisconsin and I won’t regret anything going forward because they did not have to give me an opportunity and they did. I will always be appreciative of that.
“Obviously it didn’t work out the way we planned. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. But I felt like we did all the things that were asked of us to try and make the program better. It just fell short, and it does sometimes, but that doesn’t negate anything I feel about Coach Alvarez, Terry and all the other coaches. They were very supportive.
“I can’t say enough about my first experience as a collegiate head coach at this level. Until you do something you don’t know how tough it is, but I learned so much.”
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