After 14 years with DePaul women’s basketball, Jill Pizzotti now has the official title of head coach. She rang in the new title on Tuesday with a press conference; former head coach Doug Bruno was in attendance. 

Pizzotti is the sixth head coach in program history. She takes the position with previous head coaching experience; serving as the head coach at Saint Louis University for 10 years (1995-2005). She brought the team to their first-ever postseason tournament in the 2003 women’s National Invitational Tournament. 

Pizzotti was interim head coach for the Blue Demons this past season since Bruno was out with health complications. 

“Jill is a teacher, a motivator, a connector,” Vice president and director of athletics DeWayne Peevy said. “She understands how to build culture where student athletes thrive on and off the court. She knows how to develop talent and, just as important, how to keep that talent here in Chicago.”

Pizzotti first came to DePaul in 2011 and became associate head coach in 2014. While Pizzotti coached alongside Bruno for many years, she first knew of Bruno because of his basketball camp which she attended herself when she was younger. 

“I was a Doug Bruno camper,” Pizzotti said. “At a very young age, I recognized his passion for the game. The presence he had in the entire city of Chicago … he was like a hero to me.” 

Bruno was the head coach for nearly 40 years and has built a legacy, bringing the team to five Big East tournament titles. Pizzotti was a part of all five of those. 

“I’m happy that Jill will be our next head coach,” said DePaul president Robert L. Manuel who joined via Zoom. “This legacy that she’s both inherited and helped to fill is now in great hands again.”

Now stepping into the job, Pizzotti said that she doesn’t want the program “to look a lot different” than it has in previous years. 

“The road map to having success has been written,” Pizzotti said. “Right now, I’ve been talking to our ladies and getting player focused. Putting in the time to really work on what’s really important to them and to individualize the skill work.”

In a preseason Big East women’s basketball coaches poll, DePaul was expected to be ninth in the conference. They ended up sitting in sixth place at the end of the 2024-25 regular season. They finished the season with a 13-19 overall record (8-10 conference record). They doubled the amount of conference wins they had in the 2023-24 season.

When Pizzotti was asked what’s going through her mind as the new head coach, she said she feels like she needs “more time.” Her coaching staff has not been announced yet, but she hopes to have some “old faces and new faces” announced within the next couple of weeks.

“I’m working on players and I’m working on staff,” Pizzotti said. “But it’s all going to get done and it’ll feel good to have the entire staff here because then they can shoulder some of that responsibility and we can really move forward.”

Related stories:

• Pizzotti named next women’s basketball head coach
• Doug Bruno steps down from coaching, but his love for basketball — and DePaul — endures 
• Morrow selected seventh overall in WNBA Draft

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