Jill Pizzotti grew up in Lombard, Illinois as the youngest of two sisters and as a self-described tomboy. 

“The joke my mom always said was my dad threw the ball to all three of us, and I was the only one who threw it back,” Pizzotti said as she reminisced on her childhood.

Pizzotti got her first basketball when she was 7 years old. Now, at 59 years old, she’s the sixth head coach in DePaul women’s basketball history. 

“Basketball has provided me with unbelievable experiences,” Pizzotti said. “It’s provided opportunities that I don’t think I would have experienced otherwise.”

Pizzotti is now filling in the shoes of Doug Bruno, who was the head coach for 39 years. She attended his basketball camp because her junior high physical education teacher gave her a brochure about it. 

Pizzotti played basketball at Willowbrook High School where her love grew fonder thanks to her head coach Lloyd Scholl. 

She then went on to play at Southeast Missouri State University from 1984-1988. In the 1986-87 season, she helped secure the program’s first ever Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association Tournament championship. In 2020, she was inducted into their Athletics Hall of Fame along with her teammates from the 1986-87 season. 

The first time she saw the court from a coach’s perspective was as an assistant with her alma mater from 1989-91. Four years later in 1995, she secured her first head coaching job at Saint Louis University and stayed with the Billikens for a decade. 

From 2001-05, she worked with then-assistant head coach Ty Evans for three seasons.

Now, Pizzotti has added him to her coaching staff 20 years later — he will serve as the associate head coach. 

During the offseason, Pizzotti and her coaching staff focused on getting “experienced guard play and post play.” She said the “depth of the guard position has been better than what it is.” 

Pizzotti said that DePaul plays “fast and more physical.” Evans speaks highly of Pizzotti’s coaching style. 

“She can effortlessly blend being passionate with being compassionate,” Evans said. “As passionate as she is about winning and putting her best foot forward and trying to put that part in the great light, she’s equally as compassionate when it comes to the student athletes. 

“There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for them to elevate their student-athlete experience — and not just the players, the staff as well.”

Pizzotti also added assistant coach Jessica January to her staff. January played for DePaul from 2013-17 and played professionally overseas for seven years in Romania, Finland, Slovakia and Poland.

She said how she was excited for Pizzotti to obtain the head coach role.

“She’s given head coach energy, even as an assistant when I was playing,” January said. “I mean, I think she deserves it, and the timing was just remarkable in terms of me retiring and then her getting this position.” 

Sophomore guard Devin Hagemann said Pizzotti recruited her out of high school, even though she ended up playing at East Carolina her freshman year.

“She was familiar with my peak game,” Hagemann said. “I felt that my goals for after school, as far as playing professionally, she would be a good coach to get me there because she knew what my game consisted of. It’s just how I wanted to be pushed as a player and a leader.”

With the creation of the transfer portal in 2018 and the 2021 rule letting athletes transfer without sitting out a year, teams now focus more on landing transfers. Pizzotti recruited seven players during the offseason, which is the most transfers in a season since the creation of the portal. 

Pizzotti joined DePaul in 2011 as an assistant coach, became associate head coach in 2014, and filled in as interim head coach last season while Doug Bruno recovered from health issues.

She helped guide the Blue Demons to six Big East regular season titles, five tournament championships and nine NCAA Tournament appearances during her tenure as associate head coach.

In her season as interim head coach, she led the women’s team to a 13-19 (.406) overall record. 

While last year’s record was better than the year before, DePaul ended the season on a low note. They lost to Xavier, the last seed in the Big East conference, in the first round of the Big East conference tournament, 73-80. 

Redshirt senior forward Meg Newman, who started every game last season, highlighted the stability and clarity Pizzotti has this year compared to the last. 

“It’s been really great to see Jill step into this role and not have to worry about the uncertainty of everything going on with coach Bruno,” Newman said. “She brings a sense of calm that I don’t feel like we had last year. She’s very direct, very transparent with us, she tells us what we need to do.”

Pizzotti said she “never felt completely whole” being the head coach last year until it was clear that Bruno wasn’t going to come back. After being formally announced as head coach, she said her days haven’t “changed that much” compared to last year.

“I pretty much came into work every day last year like I was the head coach,” Pizzotti said. “I felt responsible for the team, I felt responsible for the staff, I felt responsible for the program. So all of those things are just automatic.” 

Graduate forward Michelle Ojo says that Pizzotti’s coaching style allows her to “just be a basketball player.”

“I know a lot of coaches may want you to focus on the X’s and O’s, but at the end of the day, she just wants you to score the ball and make that basketball read and not be so robotic,” Ojo said.

For Pizzotti, that sense of ease is rooted in something much deeper — a lifelong bond with the sport itself.

“The places I’ve been to and the people I’ve met, who are special to me, a lot of that has come through basketball,” Pizzotti said. 

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