by Brady Sallee enters his 14th season as Ball State women’s basketball head coach. During his tenure (2012-present), the program has 264 wins, making him the winningest women’s basketball coach in the Cardinals’ history.
Coming off of last year’s success, including Mid-American Conference (MAC) regular season and tournament championships and the Cardinals’ first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2009, Ball State begins the yearly journey once again in Muncie, Nov. 3, against Arkansas State in the MAC-SBC Challenge.
Ahead of the 2025-26 season, Kee On Sports Media Group sat down with Sallee to get his thoughts on the new Cardinal roster, his coaching philosophy and the overall state of college basketball.
Q: Last season, Ball State women’s basketball saw one of the best seasons in the program’s existence, quite possibly even one of the best in Ball State’s sports history. How do you start the offseason after a year like that?
Sallee: It’s interesting because everybody assumes that there’s this euphoric, life-changing feeling when you win a championship. To be honest with you, that part of it was a little bit of a letdown. Not that I didn’t enjoy it and appreciate it at the moment, but afterwards, it’s like nothing changes, right?
The job is still the job. The process is still the process. The whole art of building the new roster started immediately after the MAC tournament. We had five or six scholarships. We had specific needs, and we had profiles of kids we were looking for. I’ve said this forever that every year is kind of an entity in and of itself because you build a team from the bottom up.
So even last year’s group, where you had all these returners, you still had to go through the building process. Now, it happened quicker, and it was probably easier. There were different decisions to be made, like letting them have a little bit more say and some of the things we were doing. So every year, it’s a little bit different, but that’s kind of what the offseason turned into. I still don’t feel like I’ve sat back and celebrated what we did because I haven’t had time. It proved to me what I’ve said forever. The goal is never the championship. What motivates me is never the championship. It’s the process that we go through every single day and watching teams grow and watching teams build themselves. The championship is just kind of a byproduct, and sometimes you get lucky. Last year, we just happened to be the best team. I think everybody would say that. From start to finish, we’re awfully proud of that. But it was just never something that I felt like was going to make or break me as a coach.
Maybe a decade from now, when I hang the whistle up, maybe I can look back and celebrate it a little bit.
Q: You have said in the past that you look at a player’s character and the ‘big picture’ over the game of basketball itself. With a roster that features so many new athletes, how do you teach them that lesson heading into a season?
Sallee: The challenge with all the newcomers is really not so much the X’s and O’s as it is teaching them the culture that we have here. And it’s not because they don’t want to learn it. You think about some of the teams I’ve had, they’ve had years to master and to buy into that culture. They’ve had years to change themselves. With this group, it’s so new and so early. They’re playing hard, and they’re working hard. We really are trying to stick to our guns with the culture piece and the things that make Ball State women’s basketball a little bit different. We’re really trying to hone in on how hard they’re playing, letting them make some mistakes and letting them fail a little bit. But I think in the long run, if we can get the base of what our program’s always been about and instill it in them, that will pay off because I do think we have talent. I look at a lot of the things we don’t do well, and it’s absolutely just a lack of knowledge. They’re trying, but they just don’t know. And then on top of that, even our returners are green, right? They know a little bit and maybe just enough to be dangerous. But they don’t know it as deeply as you would hope. So we as coaches are having to be the leaders. We’re really having to dig down and hold them accountable the way that a lot of times players hold each other accountable. They may be used to competing somewhere else, whether it’s high school or Europe or another college. But here, we define it just a little bit differently. Like when I build a practice and when I judge a practice, that’s really what we’re looking at. And early on in the season, I think that’s going to be the goal, and we’ve always done this as a program. We define what success looks like in our own library, right? So it’s never by wins and losses. It’s never who we play. It’s always how we play. And if we play the way I want us to play and we drop a game, I’m good. It’s fine because the big picture of playing that way leads to you winning a lot of games.
If you play like crap and you win, well, I’m not good, because the big picture of that is if you keep playing like that, you’re not gonna have a very good year. So that’s where the focus has to be with this group. That’s going to be my job to help them keep their head above water, because the expectation of everybody around here, outside of our locker room, is you’re going to win every game and you’re gonna win a championship. Okay, that’s fine, and I want them to think that way, and I love it. It’s just not what we talk about or think about in our locker room. Getting [the team] to be a little bit deaf to all that, and to just jump in with two feet into what we’re talking about, is the challenge.
Q: How do you think this Ball State women’s basketball team has adapted to your motto and culture?
Sallee: They’ve been good, and they’ve just been inconsistent, which you would expect from youth. It’s not inconsistent because they’re making decisions to do it or not to do it. They’re trying, and I’m getting really good effort out of them. But little things, like the minute some of them get a little bit tired, you start seeing the regression. Well, they just think they’re tired. They’re in good shape, but when you’re here for a while, you understand how to play through being out of breath, right? There’s a difference between being out of breath and being tired. So right now, we’re battling the inconsistency. We can look like gangbusters and we can look like a train wreck, all within 20 minutes.
And so as a coach and as coaches, we’re going to have to be patient in those train-wreck moments. Instead of getting frustrated, we’re going to have to really coach them and love them in those moments. And then, when they’re doing well, we’re going to have to, at times, be their biggest cheerleaders, too. Then we have to also find a way to show them, ‘Okay, that was good, but we want more.’ It’s never Christmas morning where you just get to unwrap the good and you have it. The minute it’s good, we want more. And the minute you get to that good, we want more. At times, as a player, you can beat your head against the wall because you’re like, ‘God, I just did everything he wanted me to do, and now he wants more.’
Q: While you talked about the players adapting to this, you have a coaching staff behind you who has been together for multiple seasons. How has the staff adapted to bringing in new Cardinals and showing them the way?
Sallee: I think we all look at this as a really exciting challenge. Ultimately, we’re ball coaches, right? We’re having to coach harder than we’ve had to, probably in three or four years. Maybe since year one here. To be honest with you, in year one, I was new, and all the players were new to what we were doing. It was very similar [to this year], and we have more talent, minus [former Cardinal] Nathalie Fontaine. Our staff is knee deep in film with the players or with them every day in the gym working. Every kid learns differently, right? Some kids need it on a whiteboard. Some need to see it on film. Some need to walk through and run through it on the court. So there are so many different angles you have to come at them with, and that’s where their focus is right now. I think I’m lucky because I’ve got my whole staff back that I’ve had for what, four, five years? Something like that. I can’t imagine doing this if I were also having to coach coaches. They know what we have to do. They know what it has to look like, and they know what it has to look like doesn’t have to be like last year’s group. We just gotta be the best team in our league this year. The league is different from how it was last year, and next year, it’ll be even more different. We don’t have to worry about things that we had to worry about last year because a lot of those players aren’t there. We’ve got to figure out a way to be the best group this year. I think that might get lost because of what we did last year. This team might feel the pressure from last year, but no, you don’t. Just like any of those banners up there [in Worthen Arena], it doesn’t mean that team was better than that team. It just meant that in that year, we got it done, and we were able to hang a banner for that year, right? Between my assistants, myself and the team, we gotta hear this and understand that we have to look at this season almost like looking through a Pringles can. That has to be the scope of where our focus is. Because if it gets outside of that, we can just look like a popcorn popper, and it can be crazy. So we literally have to keep our whole season right there.”
Q: Last year’s roster featured a group that earned the ‘core four’ name after playing together for years. Do you think that team proves that the new way of college athletics with NIL and the transfer portal will never be able to find that type of success?
Sallee: It certainly illustrates what I think college purists love about what college sports were. Right, wrong or indifferent, it’s on a different path now. So you either adapt or get run over. I can tell you this and that, but what we better do is figure out how to win and exist in where this thing is going. That’s really where my focus is because they don’t ever ask my opinion on rules when it comes to that. I’d certainly give it to them, but they don’t ask. Until they start asking, I’m not going to worry about that part of it. Just tell me what the out of bounds lines look like, and I’ll play with them and we’ll try to figure out a way to win. And that’s really where it goes for me. I think there’s so much to it. It’s unfortunate because there’s just not a right or wrong answer, right? And because of that, there are a lot of good things to what’s happening for the student athletes. It just depends on what perspective you’re coming at or coming from. So if you’re thinking about building a team, well, then your perspective is that, and yeah, it probably sucks. If you’re thinking about kids potentially changing the trajectory of their life when sports are over, with what they can gain financially while they’re here. Well, there’s a lot of good to that. If you’re looking at it from there’s this big monster of the NCAA and all the money that’s generated, then your perspective and the way you talk about it is different. It just can’t be a one-sentence answer to, is this good for college sports or not? Because there are so many different ways to look at it. It’s a little bit like politics. There’s just a lot of ‘I’m this and this is what’s right,’ which a lot of people like to say and like to believe. But there’s so much to it all, and there are so many layers that I just choose not to get worried about all this stuff. I control what I can control and figure out a way to exist in this world and go to another championship. I feel like a lot of mid-major coaches think that because they’re mid-major, it’s hard to get recruits and transfers here.
Q: Recently, you said on a Ball State Sports podcast that you have had coaches and agents reaching out to you about their players. To you, does that prove this program and its notoriety are in a good spot?
Sallee: I think we’ve been in a really good place for a long time. Now, maybe we’re seeing a little bit more and a little bit of an uptick there just because of the championship. That stuff comes with it. But I think our brand is well known in the Midwest for sure, and honestly, in Europe, it’s pretty well known. A lot of people want that [success] for their kids, right? And so I think we’ve said this for a long time, from the day I got here. I don’t want this to be for everybody. I don’t want just any good player to say, ‘I want to go to Ball State.’ I want the right player to look at that and go, ‘I’m gonna go to Ball State, and here’s why.’
And so we’ve always tried to pride ourselves on that, and that’s why we talk less about recruiting and more about evaluation. We have to evaluate the kids and figure out who those kids are. If we’re recruiting the right kids, we’re going to hear ‘no’ way more than we’re going to hear ‘yes,’ because they’ve got a lot of really good options, right? Here’s what I will tell you, though. In my opinion, if you’re a coach who uses the money as an excuse as to why you’re not getting players, then I think instead of worrying about that, you should look in the mirror first. That’s what I think, and there’s always a way. I look at my own path.
I played baseball in college. I’ve been coaching women’s basketball for 30-plus years and have done it pretty well. My resumeé doesn’t have Pat Summit on it.
My resumeé doesn’t have Geno [Auriemma] on it. My resumeé doesn’t have a big power four school on it or any of those kinds of things, right? And somehow, I got a head coaching job. And now, it was probably the worst Division One women’s basketball program in the country at the time, but I bet on myself, right?
And we went and we won somewhere where nobody wins. And then I got this opportunity. You can spend so much time saying, ‘Oh, I’m not getting players because of money.’
Well, so what are you gonna do?
You’d better figure it out. I’ve never been someone who’s had the most, even when I pitched in college. I never threw the hardest, I was never the best, but somehow I went 8-1 my senior year. You either want the ball and stand on that mound with all that comes with it, or you don’t. You can’t sit there and talk about the seams on the ball, and you can’t talk about the umpire who did this. You either want it, and you step up and get it done, or you don’t … We’re never gonna have the most. So am I gonna use that as a reason why we don’t succeed, or am I gonna say, ‘Screw it. Let’s knock down the wall.’ And that’s kind of the way I approach it. All this, ‘We don’t have this or we don’t have that.’ It’s just craziness, and it’s just loser talk.
Q: With this program featuring so many new pieces, fans may wonder what to expect this year. Do you have a message to the Ball State faithful ahead of the season?
Sallee: You’re going to see Ball State women’s basketball. Are you going to see what you saw last year? No. But it doesn’t mean it can’t be just as effective, right? We’re gonna play a little bit differently. We’ve got different humans, and we’ve got different skill sets. There are places where I think this current team is better than last year’s.
To think that Ally Becky’s gonna be reincarnated on the floor, or you’re going to see Marie Kiefer, Alex Richard, Madelyn Bischoff or Elise Stuck. Okay, you’re not. But we also didn’t recruit kids trying to do that. We recruited kids who were talented, who fit our system, who fit our culture and so on. I think the fans are going to come in and love this group.
I think they’re going to come in and love how hard we’re playing, even though at times, it won’t be easy for us. They’re going to love that grit and that determination that this group, I think, is going to have. They’re going to appreciate that, even on a tough loss that, last year, they weren’t used to. It’ll do two things. One, they’ll appreciate what this group is doing and how hard they’re playing for them. And two, it’ll make them appreciate how daggum special the last few years were, which is a good thing. They’re not going to walk out of Worthen disappointed. Maybe in the result, but they’re not going to be disappointed in the way these kids are going to play. I can promise them that.”
Contact Zach Carter via email at zachary.carter@bsu.edu, zachcarter039@gmail.com or via X @ZachCarter85.
