When former Michigan State HC Suzy Merchant reflected on Pat Summitt's impact on her coaching career

Former Tennessee Volunteers coach Pat Summitt - one of college basketball's winningest coaches - led the team to eight national championships before retiring in 2012 with early-onset Alzheimer's. Since her death in 2016, many players and coaches have shared her influence on their careers.

During a 2023 segment of "At The Podium with Manuel Amezcua," former Michigan State Spartans coach Suzy Merchant revealed how Summitt helped to secure her first job at Saginaw Valley State when the pair met while the latter was an assistant at Oakland (30:05).

"My boss at the time Bob Taylor you know he has he just didn't have any shame at all and I appreciate this about him when it came to this because he said to her, 'Hey, Susie's applying for the Saginaw Valley Division II job,' she probably didn't even know where Saginaw Valley was," Suzy Merchant said.

"She's head coach of Tennessee and she gets out a member of Franklin planners back then and writes it down and sure enough she had made a phone call on my behalf to the Saginaw Athletics and that AD said something to me about it. He goes, 'First of all, we felt good about you anyway but then she called.' Her whole thing kind of changed my perspective too of like how powerful a mentor or an advocate can be for you."

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Pat Summitt had huge impact in college basketball

Every year, the Southeastern Conference honors Pat Summitt's memory by dedicating a week to commemorate her impact on modern-day women's basketball coaches. The annual commemoration has been dubbed "We Back Pat," and during a news conference before the 2025 version, South Carolina Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley once again highlighted Summitt's impact on college basketball.

"It's only right," Staley said. "Pat Summitt has been the standard in our game. She's done things that you can only imagine, like only imagine and to me, in a short period of time. When you see Tennessee, it was a standard of doing business and it was all attributed to coach Summitt and her ability to bring out the best in all of her players."

Pat Summitt and Dawn Staley battled each other eight times between the latter's arrival in Columbia in 2008 and the former's retirement in 2012 with the Vols winning seven of those encounters. Staley won the last game between the two and Summitt died just a year before the Gamecocks won their first national title in 2017.