A key member of the Blue Devils’ coaching staff is headed elsewhere.
Duke assistant coach Beth Cunningham will be introduced as Missouri State’s next head coach Thursday morning, per release. The former Notre Dame standout, whose new contract with the Bears runs through the 2026-27 season, has been part of Duke head coach Kara Lawson’s staff for the past two seasons and has nine years of previous head coaching experience at VCU.
Cunningham, who also spent the eight years directly preceding her Duke tenure as an associate head coach at Notre Dame, fills the vacancy left by previous head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton, who led the Bears to NCAA tournament appearances in two of her three years with the program, with the lone exclusion a result of the event’s COVID-19 cancelation. Agugua-Hamilton recently accepted the head coaching job at Virginia, leaving Cunningham to take over the job at Missouri State.
Cunningham departs Duke’s program on the heels of a once-promising season that saw the Blue Devils ranked as high as No. 15 in the AP Poll before a sharp decline that caused them to miss the NCAA tournament.
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Jonathan Levitan is a Trinity senior and was previously sports editor of The Chronicle's 118th volume.