After taking on the role as the women’s and men’s basketball coach this season, Head Coach Remy McCarthy will be stepping down from his 17- year position as the men’s head coach and taking over solely as the women’s.

“I don’t think it’s going to be easy at all,” said McCarthy. “It’s going to be difficult.”

This season, McCarthy took over for the women’s head coach Lindsay Goldblatt, when she left to take a coaching position at California Lutheran University. He welcomed the opportunity saying it was a challenge, but it would be worth it.

“When Lindsey left, I thought it was a good move because the men have been struggling the last few years with respect to their win-loss record and in this business that’s how you’re judged,” McCarthy said.

The men’s team has been struggling to rise above third place in the WSC since the last time they were able to do so in 2010. Men’s teams tend to do better when players do not come from local high schools and the better teams usually have players that are predominately not local, McCarthy said.

To bring players outside of the local area to the school requires a lot of time and effort and takes away from the focus of being a coach: the game.

“I think the men deserve someone who is willing to put forth that effort, so they can get better and get back to where we’ve been,” McCarthy said.

This will not be McCarthy’s first time coaching women’s basketball. He did so in 1995 and enjoyed doing so, he said. McCarthy says that he takes a different approach to coaching women than he does men, but his expectations do not change.

“I don’t want the girls to think I am going to sit in a lounge chair and play Flappy Bird,” said McCarthy.

Both teams that have played for him this season support his decision to make this transition.

“I think it’s a good transition for him,” sophomore guard Samantha McCarthy said. “He’s been doing the men’s job for such a long time that it’s time to pass it on to someone else.”

As a coach, McCarthy has had a very successful career. In 2000 he was named the California Coach of the Year, in 2001 and in 2006 he was the WSC Coach of the Year. He took his men’s’ teams to five WSC Championships, four appearances at the Regional Final Four and two appearances at the State Final Four.