former assistant coaches. She was from the NRV, had paid her dues as an assistant coach at other schools, plus being a head coach at Western Carolina, after leaving VT, and basically had the “credentials”. Most folks thought she would be good, until she wasn’t. She was a cheap hire.

Wolff didn’t have the experience or temperament to be a women’s basketball coach. He even ran off his own recruits, some who were pretty good players. And also tried to control the players’ social lives…..who they could live with and associate with among other things. And another cheap hire.

So, Beth started the decline, though Weaver could have stopped the hemorrhaging way before he fired her. But that’s another story. Hiring Wolff was basically giving the program the right middle finger of fellowship, mainly because he didn’t want to go through a drawn out interview/hiring process. Sharon McCloskey, the assistant AD, actually had a few folks in her radar to apply for the job when Weaver hired Wolff….Kenny Brooks was interested at that time too.

So, to really answer your question, both coaches are probably equally responsible from their end, but Jim Weaver was the guiding force that almost killed the program because he wanted to minimize women’s basketball losses by keeping payroll and other costs down.