On Wednesday, Northwestern hired a wizard of March as its next head coach. Carla Berube, who went 21-6 in March as the Princeton head coach, is trading orange and black for purple and white.
Berube succeeds Wildcats legend Joe McKeown, who retired this month after 18 years in Evanston, Illinois, and 40 overall as a head coach.
Berube told The IX Basketball on Wednesday night that she was feeling all of the emotions — thrilled about the future, but also very sad to leave Princeton and her players there. In the end, Northwestern offered her an opportunity that she simply couldn’t turn down.
“It was a really difficult decision to leave Princeton and this team and this place and the people,” she said. “… Probably one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever had to make. …
“[But] I’m excited for the challenge ahead and the Big Ten and Chicago and the Evanston community, and I think there’s a real commitment to athletics there now. And I’m still coaching [high-academic,] amazing student-athletes, too. So it’s what I know.”
Berube’s resume is one of a proven winner, from the national championship she won in 1995 as a player at UConn through her entire coaching career. She has been a head coach for 24 years, spending 17 years at Division III Tufts from 2002 to 2019 and the past seven years at Princeton. At Tufts, she had a 384-96 record (0.800), appeared in two national championship games and made the Sweet 16 nine times.
At Princeton, Berube was somehow even better.
She went 147-29 overall (0.835) in six seasons, as the Ivy League didn’t compete in 2020-21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She went 77-7 (0.917) in Ivy League regular-season games.
She even had a winning record in the postseason — the Ivy League Tournament and the NCAA Tournament — at 10-6. In fact, she is the only Ivy League women’s coach to win multiple NCAA Tournament games, which she accomplished in the first round in 2022 and 2023. Princeton also made the tournament in 2024, 2025 and 2026, meaning that the last time Berube missed an NCAA Tournament in a season her team competed was 2011.
Even though she’d had so much success at Princeton, Berube didn’t think she’d reached her ceiling there, and it was going to take a special opportunity to pull her out of New Jersey. She genuinely loved the academic mission at Princeton (and at Tufts before that), the continuity she got to build on her roster with mostly four-year players, and raising her three children in the area with her wife, Meghan. She also loved the local ice cream shop The Bent Spoon.
“I really was not looking to leave Princeton,” Berube said. “… I’ve enjoyed every single second of it and would have loved to have kept building, too. It’s really difficult to leave these incredible women. So no, I can’t look back and say, ‘I’ve done what I could.’ I just think it’s just another opportunity, another journey, another experience [at Northwestern].”
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The Wildcats last made the NCAA Tournament in 2021, and they won a Big Ten title in 2020. But they’ve finished with losing records in each of the past four seasons, including 8-21 in 2025-26. (Coincidentally, Berube went 21-8 in her worst season at Princeton in 2024-25.)
When Berube shared her vision for Northwestern on Wednesday, it sounded extremely similar to what she’s said for years about Princeton. She wants to build a program and a culture where players come to win and also to have an incredible college experience with their teammates. She also wants them to take pride in getting better every day and in representing the university.
“I don’t care for losing. I’d really like to win and do it in a way that my players are also having a transformational experience,” Berube said. “… And I know this is not overnight Big Ten champions. It’s going to be a process. But we’re going to compete every single day, and I’m excited for that challenge.
“But I think first and foremost [in that process] is developing the really important relationships with my players, the team, building a staff that represents Northwestern and the values that we have, and get out there and get recruiting and sharing that message.”
One thing that’s been consistent for Berube across her coaching career is her focus on defense. She originally emphasized it out of practicality, because she only got a few weeks of preseason at Tufts and thought it’d be easier to become good defensively than offensively that quickly. Her system is predicated on defending as a team, with everyone moving together, anticipating and communicating.
That was something she didn’t compromise on when she got to Princeton, and expect her to bring her defense to Northwestern, too. She has said that it’s “really not rocket science,” but it is an adjustment at first for most players. But at Northwestern, she’ll have the benefit of summer workouts for the first time in her head coaching career, so the players will have a lot more reps at it by November.
“Let’s go!” she said when the prospect of doing defensive drills all summer came up.
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Yet Berube was willing to adapt to the teams she had at Princeton in other ways, which could help her in Year 1 at Northwestern. She changed the offense early in her first season at Princeton in 2019-20 when it was clear it wasn’t working. She also revamped her offense last summer, after the Tigers lost most of their size to graduation and the transfer portal, and shifted to a five-out style that ranked 22nd in the country in points scored per 100 possessions this season. That was the best ranking in Berube’s tenure.
Berube will surely have to adjust to life in the Big Ten, including revenue sharing and name, image and likeness. She’ll also likely need to use the transfer portal more after never taking a transfer at Princeton. On Wednesday, she mentioned that she was already starting to learn about all of those things, before she’d even left for Evanston.
And for an example of an elite Ivy League head coach flourishing in a power conference, look no further than Berube’s predecessor at Princeton, Courtney Banghart. Banghart led the Tigers to the NCAA Tournament eight times in 12 seasons before leaving for North Carolina in 2019. She is now 143-71 (0.668) in seven seasons at UNC and has taken the Tar Heels to three Sweet 16s in the past five seasons.
Just like Banghart left Berube stars like Bella Alarie, Carlie Littlefield and Abby Meyers, Berube is leaving her successor a loaded roster. The Tigers went 26-4 this season, with losses only to Maryland, Columbia (twice) and Oklahoma State. They are expected to return four starters, all of whom were All-Ivy selections this season.
“I think this next group is going to be just as good,” Berube told reporters on Saturday after the loss to Oklahoma State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
However, losing Berube — not to mention senior guard Madison St. Rose, who is expected to play as a graduate transfer for a power-conference team in 2026-27 — is sure to sting. That’s especially true given the strength of the conference, which received three NCAA Tournament bids for the first time ever in 2025.
Columbia has won four straight games against Princeton, a once-unthinkable streak. And Harvard has been reliably close enough to those two to spring several upsets in March, including dealing Berube the only Ivy League Tournament loss of her career in the 2025 semifinals. If Princeton takes even a half-step back under its next coach, the Lions and Crimson are likely ready to take advantage.
The strength of the Ivy League is another reason Berube loved coaching in it. She knew she’d always be tested. The Big Ten will be her biggest test yet, and she is more than prepared to absorb the pressure and build the Wildcats back up.
Berube’s press conference after losing to Oklahoma State turned out to be her final media appearance as Princeton’s head coach. And the final sentences she spoke turned out to encapsulate her seven years there and the lasting relationships she built with her players.
“I told them in the locker room [that] I’ve loved coaching this season,” she said. “I mean, I loved all my seasons, but the way they were connected and just loved each other and loved playing together, it was such a joy to coach them.”
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