Mizzou AD Veatch expects women's hoops improvement. 'But you can't overly define what that is.' (2024)

COLUMBIA, Mo. — When new Missouri athletics director Laird Veatch sat down for introductory meetings with the school’s various head coaches, he made something crowd-pleasingly clear: He wouldn’t be putting them through any SWOT analysis.

The straight-out-of-business-school acronym, pronounced like “swat,” stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats — and it’s a common, if reductive, way to organize a business or athletic program’s competitive standing.

Veatch doesn’t seem like a fan of that approach, even when getting acclimated with a new athletics department. The coaches he’s getting to know appreciate the lack of SWOT-ing.

“That was my first sign,” gymnastics coach Shannon Welker said recently at a fundraiser. “I’m like, ‘I really think I’m going to enjoy working with Laird.’”

Veatch emerged from those conversations feeling confident.

“I’ve, genuinely, been very impressed with our head coaches, with a lot of staff — just the talent, the energy, enthusiasm,” he said. “We’re a fairly young group overall, I would say, just generally speaking. Really good, quality people.”

Mizzou is returning all of its head coaches for the 2024-25 sports year, a bit of unique continuity underneath a change at the athletics department helm.

As things currently stand, that won’t be the case at this time next year: Women’s basketball coach Robin Pingeton’s contract expires April 30, 2025, shortly after the end of the college hoops season.

That deadline sets up what will likely be Veatch’s first coaching personnel decision at MU: Does he extend Pingeton? Allow her contract to run out and search for a successor? It’s already unique for a coach to enter the last year of their deal, which leaves them without any contractual obligation or incentive to prepare for the future on the recruiting trail.

For now, much as he isn’t subjecting his coaches to SWOT analyses, Veatch isn’t establishing concrete external expectations for Pingeton and the women’s basketball team.

“(I’ve) had some really good conversations with Robin,” Veatch said. “I think a lot of her as a person, as a coach. She’s obviously had some real success points throughout her career. She, and all of us recognize, the expectations are always to win and get better, right? She’s done some really good things, from what I can tell, from a recruiting standpoint and positioning her and the program to get back on a better track.”

Though the Missouri women have lost two experienced contributors in forward Hayley Frank and Mama Dembele, the Tigers have a young core of players who will be entering their second and third seasons. Pingeton has also found some size in the transfer portal to add to a team that went 2-12 in Southeastern Conference play for a last-place finish in the league.

As Veatch explains it, his stance on evaluating Mizzou women’s basketball is not an exception but the rule for how he’ll analyze other programs at critical junctures that could involve coaching changes.

“Any time I go into a year when we’re coming off a point where it wasn’t what we wanted to be the year before, it’s: Let’s focus on getting better and taking a really big step,” Veatch said. “But you can’t overly define what that is until you see it.

“You observe it, you’re around it, you’re part of it because so much of assessing the performance of a coach or a program is about all the things going on behind the scenes, not just the wins and losses. Ultimately, wins and losses 100% absolutely matter at a real high level. But it’s got to be a part of all that, so you got to spend time with people and see what they’re doing and how they’re operating. That’s something that’ll come in time.”