Charli Turner Thorne (born March 10, 1966) is a former head coach for the

Arizona State Sun Devils The Arizona State Sun Devils are the athletic teams that represent Arizona State University. ASU has nine men's and eleven women's varsity teams competing at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level as a member o ...

women's basketball Women's basketball is the team sport of basketball played by women. It began being played in 1892, one year after men's basketball, at Smith College in Massachusetts. It spread across the United States, in large part via women's college compet ...

team. She has coached for 28 seasons from 1993 to 2022. She is the winningest Sun Devil coach since the team was established and , stood as No. 2 all-time in the Pac-10/Pac-12 for career wins.

Biography

Turner Thorne studied psychology at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, where she played basketball under

Tara VanDerveer Tara Ann VanDerveer (born June 26, 1953) is an American basketball coach who has been the head women's basketball coach at Stanford University since 1985. Designated the Setsuko Ishiyama Director of Women's Basketball, VanDerveer led the Stanfor ...

. She graduated in 1988 with a bachelor's degree and later studied for a master's degree in education at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

, graduating in 1990. She is married to Will Thorne and they have three children, Conor, Liam, and Quinn.

Coaching career

Turner Thorne began her coaching career as a graduate assistant at

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

in 1988, then an assistant coach at Santa Clara in 1990. In 1993, Turner Thorne became head coach at Northern Arizona, winning consecutive seasons in 1994-95 and 1995–96, the first time the school had accomplished this. In 1996, she moved over to become the head coach at Arizona State University. Turner Thorne has led the Arizona State women's

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

team to the

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

Tournament 14 times. In the 2000-01 season, the Sun Devils under Turner Thorne achieved a 20-11 overall record and its first NCAA appearance in 22 years. In the 2001-2002 season, the team achieved a record of 25-9, which matched the single-season school record for most wins at that time. ASU shared the

Pac-10 The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...

title in 2001 and the inaugural

Tournament title in 2002, the first league championships the school had achieved. In the 2006-07 season, the Sun Devils won 31 games, including a school record 16

wins, which brought them to the

Elite Eight In the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship or the NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championship, the "Elite Eight" comprises the final eight teams, representing the regional finals, or national quarterfinals. In Division I and Divis ...

of the NCAA Tournament for the first time. At the end of the 2006-07 season, the Sun Devils ranked No. 8 in the final USA Today/ESPN coaches poll and No. 10 in the final Associated Press poll, the highest final rankings in each poll that the school had ever achieved. In the summer of 2007 Turner Thorne served as an assistant coach on USA Basketball's U-21 World Championship Team which won the gold medal at the U-21 FIBA World Championship in Moscow, Russia. In 2009 the Sun Devils made the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three seasons under Turner Thorne's leadership. Having achieved 26 wins in the 2008-09 season, Turner Thorne became one of three Pac-10 coaches alongside

head coach Chris Gobrecht and

head coach

to have led their respective schools to five or more consecutive 20-win seasons. During the summer of 2009, Turner Thorne served as the head coach for the USA Women's World University Games Team which won the gold medal at the 2009 World University Games in

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...

, Serbia, having won all seven of their games. It was Turner Thorne's second time working with

USA Basketball USA Basketball (USAB) is a non-profit organization and the governing body for basketball in the United States. The organization represents the United States in FIBA and the men's and women's national basketball teams in the United States Olympi ...

. In July 2009, Turner Thorne became vice president of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association's ( WBCA) Executive Committee. For the 2011–12 basketball season, Turner Thorne took a leave of absence from her coaching duties and returned for the 2012–13 season. On March 3, 2022, Turner Thorne announced her coaching retirement.

Year-by-year results

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Turner Thorne, Charli 1966 births Living people American women's basketball coaches American women's basketball players Arizona State Sun Devils women's basketball coaches Northern Arizona Lumberjacks women's basketball coaches Santa Clara Broncos women's basketball coaches Stanford Cardinal women's basketball players University of Washington College of Education alumni Washington Huskies women's basketball coaches Guards (basketball)