Women's Basketball
- Title:
- Assistant Coach
- Email:
- jody.adams@siu.edu
- Phone:
- 618-453-5487
Jody Adams-Birch enters her third season on Cindy Stein's staff at Southern Illinois, and her first as the associate head coach.
In her second season on staff, the Salukis posted their sixth-straight winning record. Southern defeated a ranked opponent (Missouri State) for the first time since 1991 and the Salukis finished with a RPI of 105, its highest since 2007. SIU’s four top-100 wins during the 2019-20 season were its most since at least 2002. The Salukis also repeated as Compass Challenge Champions and Nicole Martin and Makenzie Silvey were both selected to the All-MVC honorable mention team while Brittney Patrick earned her first career All-Defensive Team honor.
During the 2018-19 season, the Salukis posted a winning record, which included SIU’s first mid-season tournament title since the 1986-87 season. The Salukis earned the No. 11 ranking in the WBCA’s Academic Top-25 Honor Roll, which was the highest finish in program history and Nicole Martin and Makenzie Silvey were selected to All-MVC teams.
During her distinguished coaching career, Adams-Birch spent nine seasons as a collegiate head coach at Wichita State, where she compiled a school record 161 wins with three Missouri Valley Conference championships and a trio of NCAA Tournament appearances.
Most recently, Adams-Birch spent a season as an assistant coach at Derby (KS) High School, where the Panthers went 23-1 and won the Kansas 6A state title.
Before joining the staff at Derby, Adams-Birch spent nine seasons as head coach of the Shockers. Adams-Birch took over a program that had won 20 games just once prior to her arrival and had never made an NCAA Tournament appearance. Wichita State had an unprecedented run of success under Adams-Birch, as the Shockers posted four-straight 20-plus win seasons and made six-straight postseason appearances from 2009-15, which included three-straight MVC Tournament titles from 2013-15.
Prior to taking over the reigns at Wichita State, Adams-Birch spent the 2007-08 season as the head coach of the Murray State Racers. The Racers went 24-8 under Adams-Birch and defeated Eastern Illinois in the 2008 Ohio Valley Conference title game to secure the program’s first-ever NCAA Tournament berth.
Adams-Birch arrived at Murray State after serving as the associate head coach and recruiting coordinator under Dana Eikenberg at Southern Illinois for three seasons (2004-07). During her time at SIU, Adams-Birch helped Southern claim its first-ever MVC regular season title in 2006-07.
Prior to her first stint at SIU, Adams-Birch was the associate head coach at UMKC under Eikenberg from 2000-04 and was named a 2003 AFLAC National Assistant Coach-of-the-Year after she helped UMKC sign some of the best talent in the Kansas City area. Among those recruits was Carlai Moore, who was named to the Mid-Continent Conference All-Freshman team and earned the league’s Sixth Woman-of-the-Year Award. Moore followed Adams-Birch and Eikenberg to SIU, where she won the 2006 MVC Newcomer of the Year award, and the following year, secured a spot on the All-MVC First Team.
From 1997-00, Adams-Birch served as an assistant coach at the University of Minnesota. She was the Gophers’ recruiting coordinator and helped Minnesota sign a top-5 national recruiting class prior to the 2000-01 campaign, a class that included current Minnesota head coach Lindsay Whalen.
Before coaching at Minnesota, Adams-Birch worked as an assistant coach at Wake Forest for one season. Prior to that, Adams-Birch was an assistant on Joe Ciampi’s staff at Auburn for two seasons that included a trip to the Elite Eight in 1996.
A 1994 graduate of Tennessee, Adams-Birch played four seasons for the Lady Vols under legendary head coach Pat Summitt, and was the starting point guard for three Southeastern Conference Championship teams. The Lady Vols advanced to the NCAA Tournament in each of her four years and captured the NCAA’s ultimate prize with a national championship in 1991. She began her coaching career as a student assistant with the Lady Vols in 1993.
