After taking over as the interim in January, Caruso gets promoted to the full-time job.
Former UConn player Kristin Caruso (Lamb) was named Central Connecticut’s full-time women’s basketball coach after filling in as the interim last season.
She took over in January and led the Blue Devils to one of their best campaigns in recent memory. They finished with their highest win total since 2016-17, hosted their first NEC Tournament game since 2015 and finished third in the league.
Remarkably, Caruso had been out of basketball for more than a decade when she took over. Though she previously held head jobs at Marist (1998-2002) and Longwood (2007-11), she had been working in human resources at Central unrelated to the women’s basketball program. Caruso only became involved with the team when former head coach Way Vanney stepped away midseason.
She’ll now be tasked with building a CCSU program that doesn’t have much success in its history. Since moving to Division I in 1986, the Blue Devils have never made the NCAA Tournament, won just a single conference title (the 2015 NEC regular season crown) and own just six winning seasons.
Geno Auriemma’s first recruit at UConn, Caruso (then Lamb) arrived in Storrs in 1986 and immediately established herself as one of the best players in program history to that point. She became the first Husky to win Big East Freshman of the Year and helped lead the team to its first conference title and NCAA Tournament appearance in 1989.
Caruso set two then-program records, making 16 field goals against Iona on Dec. 9, 1986 then going 6-7 from three against BU on Dec. 3, 1988. She also finished her career with the highest 3-point percentage in UConn history to that point at 41.0 percent. Caruso piled up 1,244 career points, sixth-most on the school’s all-time scoring list when she graduated.
“I would say [Laura Lishness, Kerry Bascom] and Kris Lamb probably got it going in the right direction,” Auriemma said of his early days with the Huskies.
After her playing days, Caruso spent three years as an assistant at UConn from 1990-93 then moved on to stints at Duquesne (1993-96) and Marist (1997-98). She got her first head coaching gig with the Red Wolves in 1998 but only lasted four seasons after compiling a 32-79 record. After that, Caruso served as Jennifer Rizzotti’s associate head coach at Hartford from 2002-07 before taking over at Longwood in 2007. She didn’t even get through four seasons before being fired with a 34-60 record.
Caruso is the fourth Division I head coach with UConn ties, joining Shea Ralph at Vanderbilt, Carla Berube at Princeton and Tamika Williams-Jeter at Dayton.