who left the program earlier this spring after a successful stint at the Oklahoma HBCU.<\/a><\/p>\nRobinson arrives with deep Oklahoma roots, NAIA history and professional basketball credibility. She was selected sixth overall by the New York Liberty in the 1999 WNBA Draft and played professionally for more than a decade before moving into coaching.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am honored to join Langston University, an institution with great heritage on and off the court,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cVery few people get the opportunity to pursue their dreams in multiple eras. I missed an NAIA championship twice as a player; now I am excited to chase that dream alongside our student athletes and my new Langston family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chrystal Robinson brings WNBA experience to Langston<\/p>\n
Robinson starred at Southeastern Oklahoma State, where she became one of the top NAIA players in the country. She was a three-time NAIA First-Team All-American and the 1996 NAIA Women\u2019s Basketball National Player of the Year. She also helped lead Southeastern to NAIA national championship game appearances in 1995 and 1996.<\/p>\n
Langston athletic director Donnita Rogers said Robinson\u2019s resume made the hire a rare opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not every day you have the opportunity to hire a first-round WNBA draft pick and four-time Hall of Famer but here we are welcoming one of Oklahoma\u2019s and the NAIA\u2019s greatest basketball players to Langston University,\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n
Robinson\u2019s coaching background includes stops at the high school, junior college, NCAA Division I and WNBA levels. She led McAlester High School to an Oklahoma 5A state title in her only season as head coach. She also served as head coach at Murray State College and worked as an assistant at Utah State and TCU.<\/p>\n
Her WNBA coaching experience includes time with the Seattle Storm, Dallas Wings, Phoenix Mercury and Chicago Sky. Robinson was on staff when Seattle won the 2018 WNBA championship.<\/p>\n
Now she inherits a Langston program looking to build on recent momentum and chase the NAIA championship banner that has remained just out of reach.<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WNBA veteran Crystal Robinson is taking over an HBCU women\u2019s basketball program with championship expectations. Langston University announced…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":846363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[49],"tags":[1322,16548,51271,346071,62,67,132,68,232],"class_list":["post-846362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-featured","tag-hbcu","tag-hbcu-sports","tag-langston-university","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wnba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116698102727157856","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}