Baylor Women's Basketball Coaching Staff

Nicki Collen

Nicki Collen was introduced as the fifth Head Coach in Baylor women’s basketball history on May 5, 2021. She comes to Baylor from the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, where she spent the last three seasons at the helm. Her rookie season in Atlanta resulted in a 23-11 season in 2018, where she earned WNBA Coach of the Year honors and helped the franchise to the WNBA Playoff Semifinals. Prior to her arrival in Atlanta, she spent two seasons under head coach Curt Miller of the Connecticut Sun. Collen’s collegiate coaching career spanned for nine seasons prior to her WNBA arrival. She spent two seasons as an assistant at Colorado State from 2000-2002, one season at Ball State from 2002-2003, one at Louisville from 2003-2004, three at Arkansas from 2011-2014 and two at Florida Gulf Coast from 2014-2016. She spent six of her nine seasons as an assistant under her husband, Tom Collen CSU, Louisville and Arkansas. She also discipled under Tracy Roller at Ball State and Karl Smesko at Florida Gulf Coast. She also played at Purdue University from 1993-98.

Tari Cummings

Tari Cummings joined the Baylor staff as an assistant coach in May of 2021. Cummings arrived in Waco after a head-coaching post at Arkansas-Fort Smith and was previously a college assistant at Cincinnati (’07-09), Houston (’09-10), Arkansas (’11-16), Tulsa (’17-18) and UAFS (’03-07). Cummings and Baylor head coach Nicki Collen were reunited after coaching three seasons at Arkansas together from 2011-14. Cummings played two seasons at UAFS when the program was a two-year schoolShe transferred to Oklahoma State where she was an All-Big 12 performer for the 2001-02 season. She earned an associate's degree at UAFS in 1999 before graduating from Oklahoma State in 2003 with a degree in sociology.

Tony Greene

Tony Greene joined Baylor's women's basketball program as an assistant coach in June of 2021. Greene came to Baylor from Marquette, where he was an assistant coach and brings 27 seasons of experience as a collegiate coach. He only spent one season at Marquette, with stops at Ole Miss (’18-20), Toledo (’15-18), Texas Southern (’12-15), Grambling State (’08-12), and Langston ('94-08) where he also played.

Chloe Pavlech

Chloe Pavlech joined Baylor as an assistant coach in July of 2021. Pavlech comes to Waco after three years in Brooklyn where she led a myriad of social media content for multiple entities such as Facebook, OvertimeWBB, and Togethxr. Pavlech was a graduate assistant at Connecticut (’16-18) and a four-year letterman at the University of Maryland, where she participated in two NCAA Final Fours in 2014 and 2015.

Sophia Young-Malcolm

Two-time Baylor All-American and 2005 NCAA Champion Sophia Young-Malcolm joined Baylor's staff as Assistant AD for Player Development in May of 2021. Young will serve the student-athletes in the women's basketball program as the liaison between the Baylor Student-Athlete Center for Excellence (SACE). After playing at Baylor (’02-06), she played professionally for the San Antonio Stars (’06-15) and was a 3x WNBA All-Star. Young also played overseas in the Euroleague and Eurocup. After leaving professional basketball, Young continued leading her AAU basketball program called Sophia Young Elite in San Antonio. She also coached for two seasons as head coach at the Cornerstone Christian School in San Antonio, collecting a winning record in each of the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons. Since that time, she has served the San Antonio community as a realtor.

Michael Motta

Michael Motta joined the Baylor women’s basketball staff in May of 2021 as the Assistant AD for Basketball Operations. He joins Baylor after an eight-year stint with Dartmouth College where he was the Director of Women’s Basketball Operations. Prior to that he was a graduate assistant coach at Providence College for two seasons. As an undergraduate at Old Dominion, Motta, was a student assistant and head team manager.

Micah Odom

Micah Odom joined the Baylor women’s basketball program in June of 2021. She has a master’s degree in sport pedagogy and earned her undergraduate degree at Arkansas State. Odom has worked for Point Guard College (PGC) Basketball development camps as a customer service & sales Manager. In addition to that, she was a graduate assistant for intramural sports at Baylor for two school years from 2019-2021, and she interned with the Baylor men’s basketball program as an operations intern in the fall of 2020.

Aaron Sternecker

Jeremy Heffner

Carolina Escobedo