Kara Lawson and the Duke women’s basketball team are now in the Elite Eight of the 2025 NCAA Women’s Tournament, and the former star player in her own right says she never would have gotten to where she has without the lessons learned from legendary Tennessee Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt.
“I took a lot of things [from Pat Summitt], but the thing that I felt was one of her superpowers was her ability to connect with her players and her ability to really get in there with them. Get in the struggle with them, and stay in the struggle with them, and work to help them get out of it,” Lawson said after moving in March Madness with a 47-38 victory over rival North Carolina. ”
“That comes out of Coach Summitt… one of her superpowers was her ability to connect with her players.”@karalawson20 talks about how she learned about player connection from Coach Pat Summitt. #MarchMadness x @DukeWBB pic.twitter.com/6hD0WM1zLq
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessWBB) March 28, 2025
Before stewarding the Duke women’s basketball team in the Elite Eight of the 2025 NCAA Women’s Tournament, Kara Lawson had quite a career of her own. The 44-year-old coach played for Summitt at Tennessee from 1999-03 before becoming the No. 5 overall pick in the 2003 WNBA Draft by the Detroit Shock, who promptly traded her to the Sacramento Monarchs.
Lawson played 12 seasons in the WNBA, winning a championship in 2005 and making an All-Star team in 2007. She also has a gold medal from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Her pos-playing career has been equally successful and even more interesting. She worked as an NBA and WNBA broadcaster at ESPN and elsewhere after retiring. Lawson has also been an assistant coach for the Boston Celtics and the head coach of the gold medal-winning 3×3 basketball team at the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Now, Lawson and the Duke women’s basketball team will face their toughest test yet, squaring off against Dawn Staley and the defending champion South Carolina Gamecocks with a trip to the Final Four on the line. That game will take place at 1:00 pm ET on Sunday, March 30, on ABC.
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