USC Women’s Basketball Hires Mark Trakh as Head Coach Again

Almost a year to the day since being announced as USC’s next athletic director, Lynn Swann has made his first hire. It’s Mark Trakh for the women’s basketball team.

If the name Mark Trakh sounds familiar to you, it should. He’s not only the next USC women’s basketball coach, but a former USC’s women’s basketball coach, having coached the Women of Troy for five seasons from 2004 to 2009. He went 90-64.

Trakh becomes Lynn Swann’s first coaching hire, coming back to Los Angeles after a six-year stint at New Mexico State, highlighted by three WAC championships.

It took a whopping 49 days for the vacancy to be filled, dating back to Cynthia Cooper-Dyke’s resignation on March 3, following the Trojans’ elimination in the Pac-12 Tournament.

“It was important for us to hire a coach who really wanted to be at USC, who truly cares about our student-athletes and who believes in the Trojan way of excelling,” Swann said in a press release. “We found that coach in Mark Trakh.”

Whether Swann’s remarks are coded and in reference to Cooper-Dyke, or simply a nod to the drawn-out process is besides the point. The finality of the coaching search is a good thing for the program.

USC forward Kristen Simon tweeted about herself, and SB Nation’s women’s basketball site Swish Appeal has taken USC to task over the process in multiple articles.

"To say that this search has been a fiasco is probably an understatement. It was turned down twice, as both Stanford associate head coach Kate Paye and FGCU head coach Karl Smesko said, . Couple that with the fact new Washington coach — and USC alum — Jody Wynn wanted the job, but didn’t feel truly valued in the process, and chose to go where she felt truly appreciated. “No,” to the offer of leading the Trojans"

And so at the end of the long road, Swann and USC goes back to Trakh, a familiar face.

While it’s a good hire in the sense that Trakh is certainly trending as the winner of three-straight WAC titles, the fact remains that he hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game in 11 years. Plus, that Swann’s first hire is a USC retread has familiar optics.

This is USC. If there’s one thing USC does well apart from raising money for new buildings and renaming departments, it’s the athletic department’s dedication to insularity.

Throughout history, just about every athletic director but Mike McGee had a USC connection. And in football, 12 of the last 14 hires previously worked as a USC assistant.

RELATED: Historical Look at USC’s Athletic Director Hires

To be fair to Swann, he tried. Kate Paye and Karl Smesko didn’t have USC ties. And Jody Wynn was a Trojan who reportedly didn’t get a fair shake. That’s not being insular. But the end result surely is.

Now comes the hard part, however: winning.

The last time Trakh got the job, he was coming off four WCC titles in six years at Pepperdine and immediately took the Women of Troy to two-straight NCAA Tournament appearances.

Can he repeat that, after winning 69 games in his last three seasons at NMSU? We’ll see.