Charmin Smith

A mainstay on the Golden Bear bench for over a decade, Charmin Smith was named head coach of the Cal women’s basketball team on June 21, 2019. Smith became the 10th head coach in Cal women’s basketball history after spending 12 seasons as an assistant on the Golden Bear staff, including serving as the program’s associate head coach since 2012. Cal has had ten 20-win seasons and made nine trips to the NCAA Tournament since Smith’s arrival in Berkeley in 2007, highlighted by the program’s first trip to the Final Four in 2013.

Smith experienced a number of successes in her first year as head coach, leading the Golden Bears to three upsets over higher-ranked opponents. The first came in the form of a 4-point victory over No. 20 Arkansas on November 24 and then a win over No. 13 Arizona on the road in the regular season finale. The Bears completed their second upset in the same week as just four days later, they defeated 5-seeded and No. 22-ranked Arizona State in the opening round of the 2020 Pac-12 Women’s Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas. The win over the Sun Devils made the Golden Bears just the second 12-seed to win a game in the Pac-12 Tournament. Smith’s efforts also saw three players named to the Pac-12 Winter Academic Honor Roll and another three receive All-Pac-12 Honors. She also oversaw the signing of the seventh-ranked recruiting class in the nation, the program’s highest-ranked class since 2009.

Highly-regarded throughout the coaching ranks at both the collegiate and professional levels, Smith has played a key role in building Cal into one of the premier programs on the West Coast, handling duties from recruiting and scheduling, to alumni engagement and campus equity and inclusion. She has served on the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Board of Directors and was hired in April 2019 to serve as an assistant coach for the WNBA’s New York Liberty.

On the hardwood, Smith has helped coach the Bears to the top three individual seasons in program history. In her first two years in Berkeley, Cal set then-school records for wins in a season, finishing both years with 27-7 marks before Cal pushed itself into elite status with the record-breaking 32-4 Final Four campaign in 2012-13. The Bears also recorded their best Pac-12 record (17-1) and won their first conference regular-season crown that season. Smith has helped lead the Bears to the postseason in 11 of her 13 seasons and was also part of the staff that led the Bears to the 2010 WNIT championship.

Smith arrived at Cal for the 2007-08 under head coach Joanne Boyle and remained on staff when Lindsay Gottlieb became head coach in 2011-12. Over the course of her tenure, she has played a key role in the Bears’ player development, which has seen Cal produce seven WNBA Draft picks in recent years, including guards Layshia Clarendon, a 2017 WNBA All-Star and the ninth overall pick in the 2013 WNBA Draft, and Brittany Boyd, who earned WNBA All-Rookie recognition after being drafted ninth overall in 2015. More recently, Smith has worked extensively with Cal's post players, including 2019 National Defensive Player of the Year and four-time All-American Kristine Anigwe, who was selected by the Connecticut Sun with the ninth overall pick in the 2019 WNBA Draft.

Of the 15 McDonald’s All-Americans in Cal women’s basketball history, Smith has helped sign 13 of them since joining the Cal staff in 2007, including an impressive haul in 2009 with a class that featured four All-Americans that served as the foundation to the Bears’ 2013 NCAA Final Four run. Cal has put together five top-20 recruiting classes in Smith’s tenure, which includes three in the top 10 (2009, 2011, and 2020).

A St. Louis native, Smith was a star player for Stanford from 1993-97, helping the Cardinal to three NCAA Final Fours and three Pac-10 titles. A four-year letter winner at Stanford, she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in civil and environmental engineering from the school.

Following her collegiate playing career, Smith joined the professional ranks in the ABL from 1997-98 as a member of the Portland Power and played three years in the WNBA, along with one year in the Swedish Basketball League. She began her coaching career in 2003 as an assistant coach at Boston College, where she spent one season before joining Tara Vanderveer’s coaching staff at Stanford.

During Smith's tenure as an assistant with Stanford, the Cardinal posted an 87-16 (.845) record and made a pair of NCAA Elite Eight appearances. Smith played an integral role in the development of three of the Pac-10's top posts - Brooke Smith, Jayne Appel and Kristen Newlin - and in the spring of 2007, she switched her focus to working with the Cardinal guards, including three-time Pac-10 Player of the Year Candice Wiggins. After three years, Smith left the Farm for Berkeley and joined the Golden Bear staff for the 2007-08 season.