Sacramento State women’s head basketball coach Dan Muscatell stepped down from his position to accept an offer to return to the University of Oregon as an assistant coach for the Ducks on April 20.

“I am very happy for Dan and his family,” Sac State Director of Athletics Terry Wanless said. “He is going to be working for a renowned head coach in Paul Westhead. Professionally and personally it is a step in the right direction for him.”

The move for Muscatell will be a homecoming of sorts for him as he was an assistant at Oregon from 1999-2003.

Muscatell took the women’s basketball team through a rebuilding period lasting six seasons, posting a 36-133 record.

“It was a program that needed building. The opportunity to become a Division I head coach was a career aspiration,” Muscatell said of when he was hired. “Sacramento was a place that, when my wife and I visited, we liked the community, we liked the area; we felt there was a lot of things Sacramento State offered us. With President Gonzalez’s vision we could see this was the best decision for the years ahead.”

Sacramento State improved its record each season under Muscatell. Muscatell led his squad to its first Big Sky Conference Tournament appearance since joining the Big Sky Conference in 1996, and he did it twice in 2005 and 2009.

Sac State’s 7-9 Big Sky Conference record in 2009 is the best in school history and the Hornets will only lose one player from the 2008-09 team.

“With (Muscatell) leaving I don’t think it will change the direction of the program. We still have the same team, all the same players, so we should still be on the up,” junior forward Charday Hunt said.

Although the program has improved dramatically under Muscatell, he said feels he could have accomplished more.

“I don’t think you can say we accomplished everything we wanted because winning a championship is certainly one of the things we (strove) to accomplish and we weren’t able to,” he said.

Off the court, Muscatell’s players thrived academically. The NCAA awarded the Lady Hornets with the Academic Performance Program Public Recognition Award for the second straight year.

“The fact that we won the APR Award two years in a row speaks to the quality of individual we brought to the Sac State campus,” Muscatell said.

The best way to see the legacy Muscatell left at Sacramento State is in the kind words his former players had for him.

“Coach Muscatell had so much faith in us. He had more faith in us than we had in ourselves. That was pretty special,” sophomore guard Sami Field-Polisso said.

“He has been one of the greatest coaches I’ve ever had. He has taught me a lot about the game and about life. I am very sad to see him go,” junior forward Erika Edwards said.

Sac State has not selected a replacement for Muscatell but hopes to do so soon.

“We are just in the process of the future direction we are going to take,” Wanless said.

Muscatell’s resignation was hard to take for the players, the school and him.

“While we are disappointed in his move we also know he has left the program in very good shape,” Wanless said.

“For all of us it was sad. We didn’t see it coming. It took us a few minutes but we realized this is a good opportunity for him so we all understand,” Field-Polisso said.

“The difficulty from my standpoint in letting those kids know I was going to be changing positions was an extremely emotional situation and time. They are resilient and they are going to do great things. Up and down the halls of Yosemite are fantastic people. They became more than colleagues: they became my closest of friends,” Muscatell said.

Muscatell turned the program from being the Big Sky’s doormat, into a program that should be a contender for years to come.

“We need to continue to recruit high-quality student-athletes both in the classroom and on the court. We are now in a position to recruit those types of kids. With the kids already in the program, (they) will lead us to a very successful future,” Wanless said.

Although Muscatell did not bring a championship to Sac State, the legacy he leaves is deeper than titles-won.

“Dr. Wanless likes to say, ‘our responsibility is to stack the woodpile a little higher.’ I think we did that while we were here,” Muscatell said.

Andrew Hazard can be reached at [email protected]