This week on The IX Sports Podcast College Basketball Edition, hosts Michael Waterloo and Melissa Triebwasser sit down with Lamar University head coach Aqua Franklin.
Franklin was a basketball star in Texas in her own right. While playing college hoops at Texas A&M University, she was a three-year captain and two-time All-American honorable mention. She led the Aggies to their first-ever Big 12 championship, an Elite Eight, and was named to the school’s Hall of Fame in 2018.
Franklin played in the Women’s National Basketball Association for several years before jumping into coaching. She took the head coaching job at Lamar in 2019. Under her guidance, the Cardinals have won at least 20 games each of the last four seasons, and were Southland Champions in 2024.
There are challenges to leading a mid-major program in the age of Name, Image and Likeness funding — but Franklin said that relationship-building remains central to her roster-building strategy.
“I’m a relationship person, and I try to get to know each, each player that I recruit before they come on campus,” Franklin said, explaining that she wants to maintain good relationships with each and every one of her players.
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“I want to know how to coach them the right way. I want to know when I need to push their buttons, when, when they’re not having a good day. What does that look like? How can I continue to make them better?”
Franklin stepped into the job at Lamar following the departure of former IX Sports Podcast College Basketball Edition guest Robin Harmony. Harmony had already built a high-level program.
“What is the challenge of stepping in a room where the standard is already high, and how did you kind of balance wanting to honor what Coach Harmony had built, whilst making sure that people understood this was Aqua Franklin’s team?” Triebwasser asked.
Franklin said that Harmony did a “tremendous job” recruiting, and players Harmony recruited who weren’t graduating stayed on when Franklin became the head coach. Franklin said they played a similar style to Harmony in her first season.
“They had some unbelievable young women. They were great people first, and so that year was, it was good. We didn’t win a lot, but it was really good, and so that allowed us to continue to build and put a stamp on it, and so we hit the road recruiting,” Franklin said.
Tune in to the podcast to hear the story of how Franklin got the job at Lamar, what she is excited about this season and her favorite pair of shoes.
Make sure to subscribe to The IX Sports Podcast for in-depth coverage of women’s soccer, hockey and basketball; and tune in each weekday morning for a quick overview of the biggest headlines on Women’s Sports Daily, like WNBA news and PWHL expansion updates.
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