Women's Basketball | UW will hire Duke assistant

Tia Jackson, an assistant coach at Duke, will be hired as the Washington women's basketball coach, according to sources.

Jackson told the Duke players this week that she had accepted the job, a source said.

A news conference to introduce Jackson could come as soon as Friday. Jackson will first meet with UW players and the advisory committee that had been set up to hire a new coach, sources said.

Jackson, a 1995 graduate of Iowa where she played for coach C. Vivian Stringer, has been an assistant at Duke for the past two seasons working for Gail Goestenkors. Goestenkors was named the coach at Texas earlier Tuesday.

Jackson, who turns 35 on April 21, spent five years as an assistant at UCLA and one at Stanford in becoming labeled as "one of the top recruiters in the nation,'' according to the Duke media guide. Jackson is not considered a top candidate to replace Goestenkors, according to Durham-area media reports.

The Huskies are replacing June Daugherty, fired on March 18 after 11 seasons at UW.

Duke was 32-2 this season, winning a school-record 30 straight games at one point, before losing in the regional semifinals of the NCAA tournament.

Jackson played one year in the WNBA with Phoenix for coach Cheryl Miller before becoming a full-time coach.

While at UCLA, she served as the school's recruiting coordinator, bringing in a class that in 2003 was ranked among the top six in the country and in 2002 included five high-school All-Americans.

Jackson played at Mardela Springs (Md.) High School before heading to Iowa, where she helped lead the Hawkeyes to the 1993 Final Four.

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com.