It was an awkward high-five — an Italian coach and an American player with a brief exchange following a practice overseas.

“I was like, ‘What is he staring at?” the player, Adia Barnes, said. “He tried to flirt with me in the hallway. I was embarrassed.”

Her exchange with Salvo Coppa turned into phone calls, which turned into dates, and eventually marriage.

Barnes is now the head coach of the University of Arizona women’s basketball team, and Coppa is one of her assistants.

The Daily Coach caught up with Barnes recently to discuss the twists and turns of her basketball career, lessons in early coaching hardship, and her program’s core values.

This interview has been condensed and edited for brevity.

Coach, thanks a lot for doing this. Know you grew up in San Diego and your dad played in the NFL. Tell us a little about your early years and some key lessons from childhood.

I grew up at the beach. I was the little kid riding the skateboard and bike everywhere. I grew up across the street from a recreation center, so I was watching guys like Michael Cage and these big-time former NBA and NFL players who always treated me like a little sister because they all knew my dad.

That was where I first saw hard work, competition. I was inspired and wanted to dunk like them and have feet that big. I just wanted to be great like that. I started playing pickup every day with the guys at the rec center, and I think that’s where I got my toughness and competitiveness. I couldn’t cry when things got hard because I was the only girl. Watching them play made me want to be great like that.

You played at the University of Arizona, in the WNBA for several years and overseas. Was coaching always on your horizon?

I was asked twice when I was playing professionally, but I had no desire. I played 13 years as a pro. I was going to morning shooting, going in the afternoon and taking a nap, going to practice again. I was traveling all over the world, making a lot of money. I wasn’t going to coach. At that time, I thought I’d play for 20 years.

As I got older and was figuring out my skills and what I was good at, I realized I really loved mentoring and helping people. I thought I’d try coaching. I wasn’t going to move from Seattle, had just made Seattle my base and retired in my early 30s. I had been doing TV for a bunch of years around my WNBA season and overseas season, but I didn’t love TV.

Kevin McGuff got the job at Washington and I thought that’s probably the only place I’d try coaching. He called me and hired me. I wasn’t sure if I’d love it, but wanted to see if it was for me, and I fell in love with it.

You were a role player for a lot of your professional career. How did that set you up for success down the road and maybe help you empathize as a coach?  

A lot of times, superstars aren’t great coaches because things came so easy to them. They’re so phenomenal, and I think it’s surprising to them when someone doesn’t have their work ethic or their set of skills. You do work, but you have this gift.

For me, I was a good college player, not a good pro player, but I was a worker, a very good professional, a great teammate and a good role player for whatever role you were willing to give me. I understood that. If I wouldn’t have been in these different situations — the last player on a WNBA team or been a starter — I don’t think I would.

I know what it feels like to be the last player on the bench, to go in with 30 seconds left, to be a superstar or All-American or star player who gets all the shots. I think that makes me understand feelings. As a coach, there are times where I didn’t put someone in a game with 20 seconds left because I hated it as a player. I’d rather not play. So, I think there’s a lot of things I do where I think, “How would I have felt in that situation?” I’m very sensitive to those things because I went through them and struggled with them.

It sounds like you were pretty competitive and disciplined as a player. When you got into coaching, was it difficult for you to reach players who weren't as intense?

That was hard for me. My first couple of weeks on the job, I was thinking, “Why isn’t everyone in here way before practice?” It was unheard of for me. I had come from a pro career where practice was at 10, you were ready on the court at 9 o’clock working, not just shooting, but doing skill work and sweating. If you come right before practice, you’d get cut in the pros. That was hard and not understanding how the players weren’t super-competitive.

I think understanding how young they were and that they didn't work that hard and weren’t that dedicated was hard to get used to coming from the pros.

You met your husband when you were a player overseas and he was coaching. Now he’s on your staff. How do you balance that relationship to make an effective pairing at home and on the sidelines?

We’re very different. I’m more extroverted, he’s more introverted. We have different philosophies in some areas of basketball and challenge each other, so I think we make each other better. I’m heavy on a player’s perspective, he’s heavy on technical things and skill development. We complement each other.

We don’t share an office or always come in the same car. It doesn’t feel like we work together every second. If we were in the same office every day, we’d kill each other. It’d be too much.

It’s great to have someone as invested as you on your staff. We might say, “Hey, can you go pick up the kid? I have this meeting.” But we don’t have time to talk about the kids in practice because we’re so busy. We’re so narrowed in. We try to be conscience of not making decisions without the staff when we’re at home because that’s not fair.

You’ve had tremendous success recently going to a National Championship game, but you also had some rough seasons early on. How’d you get through your first years as a head coach and did self-doubt creep in at any time?

It crept in from the fact that I’d never lost so much. I was like, “Gosh, we suck. How long is it going to take to build this program?” But that (second) year, we had (three young players) down the bench. I knew we’d be better the next year. It was kind of like just get the players better, celebrate the small victories, not the wins because we’re not going to win.

I had to learn to eat some humble pie and just go back to the drawing board and figure out ways to get better and try to steal two quarters here or there. Maybe you don’t win four, but you win two. I think it made me a better coach.

That was also the year I brought my father to Arizona, put him in a home and lost my father, and had a miscarriage. That was a year with a lot of adversity. I look back on it like wow, that was pretty phenomenal that I even sustained everything and recruited and did all of that.

How did you mentally navigate all of that at once and still coach?

It was hard. I’ve learned to just do it. I’m pretty tough. I have a very strong mentality and am very driven, but it was hard. There were times I cried and was like, “What the heck?” I knew I was doing the right things the right way. I knew it was going to take time. I knew I was going to turn it around.

I was optimistic because of who I had sitting there. I knew we’d be better. I was not going to stay and win six games. I was just going to outwork people. It was going to happen. It was just having the patience.  

What are your program values?

Family, trust and passion. Underneath that is uniquely chosen, love the process, leave a legacy.

The process is our everyday skill work. Our standards are very high. It’s serving the community. It’s going above and beyond and doing all the little things. We’re very detail oriented.

You’re going to become a better basketball player, and the process is slower. We teach basketball, not just plays. For me, you’re going to be better than you came in. You’ll be prepared for life after you leave, how to talk to the media better. You’ll be prepared in professional settings, know what to wear, how to present yourself, how to eat at a table because you’ve had etiquette training. You’re going to be confident because you’re prepared.

With transfers being so prevalent these days, do you ever worry about losing players and roster turnover?

I think you get to a point where you don’t care because it is what it is. That’s the nature of the business right now. I think I did that a little last year saying, “Let me give her more opportunities because I really want her to have a future here.” But in the end, if they want to go, you’re going to lose them anyway. We’re paid to win games, and we’re trying to build a great program and great culture to win and sustain success.

Transfer if you want to, don’t if you don’t want to. I’m not going to worry about those things because they’re too stressful. It takes a lot of the love and fun out of the game. This is the nature of the business. Kids leave without a reason or they leave because they have unrealistic expectations — and I’m O.K. with that…

I don’t look back. If you’re not aligned with me here and aren’t on the same page as I am or working toward what I am and are compromising that, you won’t be in this program. I think that was clear on both ends.

Q&A Resources

Adia Barnes Coppa ― Website | Twitter | Instagram