California hires familiar face in Charmin Smith as coach

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Charmin Smith has been named women’s basketball coach at California.

Smith returns to Berkeley where she most recently served as a top assistant since 2012 before joining the WNBA’s New York Liberty as an assistant coach in April. She replaces Lindsay Gottlieb, who departed last week to become an assistant coach with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.

The announcement was made Friday and Smith will be formally introduced at a news conference on campus Tuesday. She joined the Cal staff under then-coach Joanne Boyle in 2007-08, then stayed after Gottlieb took over in 2011.

As a college star at Stanford from 1993-97, Smith led the Cardinal to three Final Four appearances and three Pac-10 titles. She then played in the former ABL and the WNBA.

Smith coached as an assistant at Boston College for one season in 2003, then worked as an assistant under Hall of Fame Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer before moving to Cal.