Former Louisville Cardinal Becky Burke enjoying meteoric rise in coaching ranks

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Becky Burke knew toward the end of her career as a University of Louisville Cardinal in 2012 that she wanted to coach.

“I think when you play for a coach like Jeff Walz and you play for somebody like (assistant) Steph Norman, you naturally start to think that way and you naturally start to form an appreciation for not only the way that we do things, but why we’re doing them that way,” Burke said.

Burke wasted no time finding her way to a head coaching position in college basketball, albeit one a program that she had to create herself. At age 23, she was asked to start up the NAIA Embry-Riddle women’s basketball program in 2016.

“I was handed the keys to an empty office and they said ‘here you go, figure this thing out.’ I had no idea what I was doing, now looking back at it, but those three years there, I truly did every single thing,” Burke said.

She must have known what she was doing, because that fledgling program won 14 games in their inaugural season, followed by a 21-6 record in the 2017-2018 season. That led to Burke moving to NCAA Division II University of Charleston, where she won 48 games in two seasons.

In 2020, Burke broke through to the Division I level, where she took over the USC Upstate Spartans, winning eight games in her first year, then went 22-8 in year two, earning her Big South Conference Coach of the Year honors.

That also earned her a second Division I job: head coach at the University of Buffalo, where she was hired in April and had to get to work immediately.

“We’re only going to have three returning players from our roster from last year, which means that we have to hit the ground running," she said. "Like I’m talking sleepless nights, hitting the road, phone calls from the second we wake up to the second we go to sleep, official visits. It’s been an absolute whirlwind but we’ve signed 10 kids since I was hired (in April)…and that may be a world record.”

“Winning in college basketball is not as easy as a lot of people think it is. And Becky’s figured it out,” UofL women’s basketball coach Jeff Walz said. “Her passion for the game, her willingness to learn and then she does a great job of relating to players and in today’s day and age, that’s really important.”

Burke has taken those lessons from her playing days under Walz and her former teammate, Candyce Bingham Wheeler, who is now on staff with Burke at Buffalo and lets her know that she’s taking more than just coaching lessons from Walz.

“After practice, she’ll come up to me and say ‘you had a Jeff moment today.’ I’m like ‘is that a good or a bad thing?’ because he has his good and bad moments too," Burke said. "It’s funny because from her perspective, I’ll just look over at her in the corner and she’ll be laughing at me at something I’ll say and we’ll talk about it after practice, but yeah, I probably have picked up a few things from him.”