New Pitt Coach Robin Harmony Brings Program-Building Experience to Women's Basketball

PITTSBURGH — When Pitt athletic director Allen Greene introduced new women’s basketball head coach Robin Harmony at her introductory press conference on Friday afternoon, he called her hiring a “new beginning” for the program.

After 11-straight losing seasons that spanned over the tenures of three different head coaches, that is exactly what the program needs.

When Greene started his search for the program’s next head coach, there was one overarching feature that he was looking for in potential candidates and that was the ability to build a program from nothing.

“We were looking for a builder,” Greene said at the start of the press conference. “A sitting Division I head coach, one who preferably was competing in the NCAA Tournament. Someone that has already been in the chair, someone who knew the weight of the role and someone that has proven that they could build this inside out.”

Harmony checked that box tenfold. Her resume speaks for itself when it comes to building places that were nothing into championship-level programs and she looks to do the same over the course of her tenure at Pitt.

Her first head coaching job foreshadowed her future in the business as she was handed the task of starting a program entirely from scratch.

In 2005, Harmony agreed to become the first head coach in the history of St. Thomas, a NAIA school which is located in Florida. From that moment on, due to the situation she opted to tackle head on, Harmony transformed herself into a program builder.

Upon her arrival at St. Thomas, she was forced to craft a roster, a coaching staff and a program at a university that did not even provide her team with a place to practice.

“The first two years, we didn’t have a gym,” Harmony said. “We had to go out and find a place to play.”

Six years later, Harmony decided to leave for the Division-I level, but what she accomplished at St. Thomas did not go unnoticed as evident by her promotion. She compiled a 132-49 record at the NAIA level, won three regular season championships, a conference championship and made three trips to the NAIA National Tournament.

When she arrived at Lamar University, the program was already established as it was coming off of a dominant six-year stretch in which it won 20-plus games in four of those seasons, but that did not mean there was sunshine and rainbows waiting for her as she was faced with a new set of challenges.

The challenge that she faced during her arrival to Lamar was that of recruiting in-state kids as she said Texans do not just open doors for any ole’ “Yankee.”

“When you are a Yankee and you go to Texas, they don’t really open the door all of the way for you,” Harmony said. “They sort of crack it because they are nosey so we just fought the fight and got that program turned around so the last three seasons at Lamar we did win and we were successful.”

When she finally gained the trust of the people around her, Harmony again led her program through a dominant stretch of basketball as she went 115-68 over six seasons and won the Southland Conference three separate times.

Harmony then decided to move up the ladder again and landed at the College of Charleston in 2019.

When she arrived in Charleston, she inherited a program that was at an all-time low. In the five seasons prior to her signing, the program won 10-plus games just once, and it became a place where opponents would roll into town for a “vacation” rather than a physical basketball game.

“Teams would come in on a Thursday night, play us on Friday but sort of have a little vacation,” Harmony said. “They would stay Friday, whoop that team by 40 and stay Saturday until it was time to go to the next spot.”

That all changed when Harmony took control of the helm as she nearly doubled their win total in her first year and won 18 games by her third season at Charleston.

When the foundation was finally stable, the program underwent the best stretch of success that it has ever seen as Harmony’s teams won 22-plus games over each of the last three seasons and made its first NCAA Tournament ever this past year.

Not only has Harmony proved herself to be a coach that can build a solid program foundation, she proved herself to be a winner at every level.

From her Hall of Fame playing career at the University of Miami, to her 132 coaching wins at the NAIA level and 137 coaching wins at the Division-I level, she has been a winner through it all and has no plans of stopping now that she is at Pitt.

Simply put, Greene and the administration at Pitt found exactly what they were looking for in Harmony, a builder and a winner. She has left each of her previous three programs in a much better situation than when she found them.

Harmony does not even hope to do the same at Pitt, she vows to do it. Not only does she know what it takes to turn a program around, she is being provided the necessary resources to pull it off, something that was not always in place for her at her previous coaching stops.

“I always build,” Harmony stated. “I’ve built it from the ground up where I didn’t have all of the resources and now we are going to rebuild this with all of these resources so that is how I know that we can get it done. It could be three years, it could be four years but it is going to get done in my time frame.”

While many that came before her thought that they could be that person to lead Pitt back to its glory days of making back-to-back Sweet 16’s, they failed to even come close.

The difference is that Harmony knows that she be the one to accomplish those goals for Pitt due to her experience, the heightened level of resources, a strong administration and a group of assistants that have followed her during every step of her journey.

“I’m honored to lead Pitt women’s basketball,” Harmony said. “I can’t do it by myself. I have to do it with a great administration, great assistants and players who really want to play.”