To fill the vacant women’s basketball head coach position, Pitt Director of Athletics Heather Lyke turned to a familiar face.

Lyke announced Friday morning that UMass head coach Tory Verdi will be the next head coach of the Panthers. The hiring serves as a reunion of sorts, as Lyke and Verdi overlapped at Eastern Michigan.

Verdi was hired to be the EMU head coach in 2012, one year before Lyke took the Athletic Director position in Ypsilanti. Lyke and Verdi spent three basketball seasons together at EMU; over the final two of those seasons, the Eagles won a total of 46 games and made the WNIT twice, advancing to the third round in 2014-15.

"Tory Verdi owns an outstanding track record of elevating basketball programs on and off the floor," Lyke said in a press release. "This has been evident at each of his coaching stops, both collegiate and professional, during his 28-year career. I saw this firsthand when we worked together at Eastern Michigan, where his blueprint for success completely revitalized our program. Tory continued that exceptional work at Massachusetts, transforming a losing program into Atlantic 10 champions. He is a passionate teacher of the game and personally invested in his student-athletes. We are thrilled to welcome Coach Verdi, his wife Heather and children Avery, Bradyn and Tyler to Pitt."

Following the 2015-16 season, Verdi was hired to be head coach at UMass. The Minutewomen went 5-11 in the Atlantic 10 and 12-18 overall the year before Verdi arrived and dipped to 9-21 overall and 3-13 in the A-10 during his first season.

The improvement came over the next three seasons, as the team’s overall win total increased from nine to 14 to 16 before cracking the 20-win mark in 2019-20. That season, the Minutewomen went 9-7 in the A-10 to tie for fourth place. One year later, in the pandemic-shortened season, they went 16-8 and qualified for the WNIT.

The last two seasons have seen UMass emerge as a top program in the A-10. In 2021-22, they went 26-7 overall and 11-4 in the A-10 for a third-place finish in the regular season before winning the conference tournament to qualify for the NCAA Tournament - the program’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1998.

This past season, the success continued. UMass went 26-6 and won the A-10 regular-season title with a 14-2 record.

"I am beyond excited about this opportunity," Verdi said in a press release. "From the first time I stepped on campus and in the Pete, I felt at home. It's time to awake the sleeping giant. I know that we will win and win big. Together, we will move mountains. We will put a product on the floor that our community, city of Pittsburgh and state of Pennsylvania will be proud of. We belong. Change is coming."

At Pitt, Verdi will replace Lance White, who was one of Lyke’s first hires in the spring of 2018. White won 11 games overall in his first season but just 10 over the next two years; after five seasons, White won a total of 11 ACC games and finished higher than 12th in the conference, with the Panthers finishing 14th or 15th in four of his five seasons.