On Sunday, the Charles E. Smith Center will welcome one of its most legendary coaches for the first time in 6,504 days.
March 1, 2008, is the date of the last home game Joe McKeown coached at George Washington before his departure to the Chicagoland area. Since then, the women’s basketball head coach has won 274 contests over 18 seasons at Northwestern.
“To actually coach a game in the Smith Center again will be very surreal,” McKeown said.
McKeown took the helm in Washington, D.C. from 1989 to 2008,
accumulating 441 wins and a whopping 15 NCAA Tournament appearances in 19 seasons with GW. To date, the Revolutionaries have never advanced past the NCAA Tournament’s opening round under any other coach, but McKeown did so 13 times.
Now, in his final season before retirement, NU’s head coach will get to face his former school for the first time as a Wildcat, revitalizing memories of past connections from those days in Foggy Bottom.
“I’m going to probably sit on their bench by mistake and look around for Red Auerbach,” McKeown said.
Auerbach, the legendary Boston Celtics coach who starred during his playing days at George Washington, was one of many people with whom McKeown built relationships in the nation’s capital. The pair often played racquetball together, and Auerbach was frequently in the GW gym, allowing the two to connect and have conversations about basketball and life.
Throughout his coaching career, McKeown developed similar friendships with so many people surrounding his programs, including several other greats of the game. He’d often have lunch with Auerbach and the legendary Morgan Wootten, an all-time great high school basketball coach at DeMatha Catholic. He learned from legends such as Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma, women’s basketball coaching icons who combined for 20 national championships.
McKeown said he was “very aggressive” about getting chances to talk with them and hear their advice. Much of the guidance he received about mentorship shared a common thread.
“Learn from the best, and take what you can, but put it into your world, your personality, who you are,” McKeown said. “That was probably the best advice I got from all of them.”
McKeown has taken those words to heart, becoming a genuine mentor for numerous successful players and coaches. After decades of memorable seasons at GW and NU, it’s clear his personality has gained lasting respect across the basketball landscape.
Over the years, McKeown has made an impact on countless lives through his ability to connect with people on a personal level. Few people have experienced that more than his eldest daughter, Meghan.
“I think what makes me so proud of my dad at the end of the day is how good of a person he is and his reputation in the business,” Meghan McKeown said.
The younger McKeown, who works as a TV analyst for women’s college basketball and the WNBA, played basketball at Northwestern from 2010 to 2014. Growing up, she went on recruiting trips with her dad, getting the chance to meet people from all kinds of backgrounds.
Throughout those travels, Joe McKeown’s kindness stood out.
“He just has this way of being able to talk to anybody,” Meghan McKeown said. “Finds a way to ask about your day, then he remembers things that you told him, and he’d follow up with the recruit. He’s like, ‘Well, how’d your math test go?’ Or he’d ask about their friends. Little things that are maybe smaller, casual things that he takes a lot of time to remember.”
Beyond the players, Joe McKeown has built relationships with all kinds of people involved in his programs. According to his daughter, he knows the name of every janitor at Welsh-Ryan Arena, and the same was true at the Smith Center back in the day.
But when Joe McKeown was on the court, Meghan McKeown witnessed a version of her father that wasn’t always so laid-back.
“Back in the day, he used to wear a suit, and he would throw the jacket,” Meghan McKeown said. “My mom and I used to play a game. We’d be like, ‘Okay, before or after the first media timeout, will his jacket still be on?’ And so we definitely had some great moments with that one. But he’s mellowed out now.”
Despite some fiery in-game moments over the years, the reverence for Joe McKeown is shared even by officials, some of whom could be the targets of his displeasure at times. Recently, after calling the Louisville-UNC women’s basketball game on Dec. 14, Meghan McKeown ran into a referee on a rental car shuttle who asked how her dad was doing.
The referee referred to Joe McKeown as one of his favorite coaches ever. He shared memories of McKeown’s time at GW and spoke admiringly of the now-NU head coach.
“I was like, ‘Well, I hope he didn’t give you too hard of a time,’” Meghan McKeown said. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, you know, that’s just how you talked to each other back in the day.’ The respect he also has from the officials, that’s really cool to see.”
Initially, both GW and Northwestern were programs that sorely needed a rebuild.
“I have a way of taking bad jobs at bad times, at least on paper,” Joe McKeown said with laughter. “But we saw the potential.”
After taking the helm of the Revolutionaries in 1989, McKeown had to find a way to rebuild a program that finished 9-19 in its previous season. At Northwestern, things were arguably even tougher — when he took over in 2008, the program hadn’t won more than eight games in a season since 1998-99.
Still, once the respective new eras began, it quickly became clear how much each school could offer to recruits.
“You had great things to sell, whether it was Washington, D.C., or the Atlantic 10 was a great league then,” McKeown said. “And obviously coming into Northwestern in the Big Ten, we were able to sell that. And the academic opportunities at both schools: at GW, to have Washington at your disposal, and the same thing here, to get a degree from Northwestern and go to school in the Chicago area. How cool is that?”
Initial success wasn’t easy. At both schools, the facilities were in poor shape, and a full-on rebuild seemed necessary.
But at both stops, NU’s head coach achieved winning ways quickly, and he credits much of that to his players at the time.
“I got real lucky because I had players in place that hadn’t won, but they wanted to win, and they were great kids,” McKeown said of his time at GW. “And then when I took over at Northwestern, again, they were really bad. But I had a couple players in place, Amy Jaeschke, who’s a Hall of Famer now, and they cared. And they wanted to be coached hard. They wanted to win.”
During his time at Northwestern, McKeown has reached two NCAA Tournaments and five NITs. He also couldn’t finish coaching one of his best teams ever during the 2019-20 COVID-19 season, where the Wildcats finished 26-4 with the Big Ten regular season title before the NCAA Tournament’s cancellation cut things short. Meghan McKeown said her dad “felt like he had a Final Four team” that year.
Still, despite many years of success at NU, Joe McKeown’s dominance in the nation’s capital remains unmatched.
“The bar was set so high by the players and by our staff,” McKeown said. “We always considered ourselves one of the best teams in college basketball every year.”
For McKeown, the Revolutionaries’ success only intensified at the end of his tenure, making his eventual departure that much more difficult. GW reached back-to-back Sweet 16s in 2006-07 and 2007-08, accumulating a combined 55-11 record over the two campaigns.
In McKeown’s last season with George Washington, the Revolutionaries were a No. 6 seed, winning 66-56 against No. 11 Auburn before defeating No. 3 seed California 55-53. A matchup against two-seeded Rutgers was all that stood in the way of an Elite Eight battle against Auriemma and the Connecticut Huskies.
McKeown recalls talking with Auriemma that week and hoping for a matchup with his longtime friend.
“We were talking a little bit because we both grew up in Philly and I’d known him for a long time,” McKeown said. “He’s like, ‘You guys are really good.’ I said, ‘I hope we get to see you.’”
Unfortunately for McKeown, his team came up short. George Washington fell 53-42 to the Scarlet Knights while Auriemma continued his journey to the Final Four.
That loss was the final game of McKeown’s GW career. His decision to move from George Washington to Northwestern had already been made, but it wasn’t due to any lack of fondness for his former school. Meghan McKeown said her dad opted to take the NU job because it allowed access to better services in Chicago to support her brother Joey, who was diagnosed with autism at a young age.
Moving to the Chicago area was important for Joey McKeown’s well-being. Still, Joe McKeown’s exit from GW was not easy by any means.
“That was one of the hardest things we’ve ever done as a family,” McKeown said. “I was there almost 20 years, so it’s not like I was walking out on the school that just hired me. So I felt like we did our part. But the group that I left, I was really close to it, and I felt bad for them because they had come there to play for me.”
With the Wildcats, McKeown has coached his fair share of stars through the grind of Big Ten basketball.
“They wanted to be coached,” McKeown said. “And Coach Auerbach and I would talk about that. The great players want to be coached hard, they want to be pushed, and that’s what separates them. The way he dealt with Larry Bird or the way I dealt with Veronica Burton, the idea is the same.”
When evaluating McKeown’s best NU players, Burton and Jaeschke stand out alongside names like Nia Coffey, Lindsey Pulliam, Maggie Lyon and others. In recent years, it has been difficult for the ‘Cats to find a superstar to match the impact of those legends, and the team has struggled collectively, posting an 8-47 Big Ten record over the past four seasons.
This year, the Wildcats currently sit at 6-5, seeking to turn things around while past issues such as poor three-point shooting and second-half struggles persist. But in senior forward Grace Sullivan, it seems like McKeown may have found his next — and final — big name.
“I’m really proud of her from a lot of different standpoints,” McKeown said. “She’s very, very unselfish, and she wants to win. She wants to be a teammate first.”
Entering Thursday’s contest against Loyola Chicago, Sullivan’s statistics were simply jaw-dropping. The 6-foot-4 senior was averaging 24 points and 8.6 rebounds per game while shooting 59% from the field. McKeown said Sullivan’s teammates “look at her in awe” while she seemingly knocks down every shot to begin games.
But during Northwestern’s heartbreaking 69-68 defeat at the hands of the Ramblers, disaster struck. After playing just nine minutes, Sullivan went down with an ankle injury, and she did not return to the game. As of now, her status remains uncertain for Sunday and beyond, and the Wildcats would suffer a huge blow in the event she is forced to miss any significant time.
Amid a five-game losing streak, McKeown said he sees the individual limitations of his squad against several teams in the Big Ten. Because of that, he has emphasized collective effort, motivating his team to perform “stronger as a unit.”
“That’s our goal, and they’re buying into that,” McKeown said. “I see that every day.”
Regardless of the current skid, the upcoming weekend will be a special experience for McKeown and the Northwestern program alike.
“I don’t think it’s hit him yet that this is it,” Meghan McKeown said. “In ways, GW feels like a past life. It feels so long ago, but I think it’s going to be incredibly emotional going there and just reflecting on the legacy that he left.”
The team will practice at George Washington on Saturday, giving Joe McKeown and his players the chance to let things sink in before the game. In addition to a Saturday night party in McKeown’s honor, there will be a pregame event of some sort — although McKeown, busy with coaching, knows little about when, where or how that might take place.
McKeown said his wife and daughters have far more knowledge of the planned celebration. He simply plans to “roll with it.”
“[I’m going to] try to keep my emotions in check during the game,” McKeown said. “Once we get started, you’re playing, and I owe that to my Northwestern team.”
Although success on the court has been hard to come by as of late, this year’s Wildcat squad remains special to McKeown. He said he is “so proud” of the fact that almost every player and coach came back despite knowing 2025-26 would be his final ride. In the modern era with NIL and the transfer portal, McKeown said his returners had the opportunity to leave with no penalties, but almost everyone remained with the ‘Cats despite his imminent departure.
Soon, the Northwestern women’s basketball program will go in a new direction and hire a new coach. It’s hard to know the school’s plans at the moment, and it’s unclear whether the athletic department would seek to hire a current assistant or look elsewhere for new leadership. At the moment, McKeown doesn’t seem to have a role in the coaching search or the process for maintaining long-term stability following his departure.
“I don’t know,” McKeown said. “I feel like our staff, their resumes are really strong. But again, that’s something that is a little bit out of my hands.”
For now, the focus remains on McKeown and his Northwestern tenure. Sunday’s game — for the first time — will combine the past and present lives of the McKeown family, closing the book on a head coaching career that has spanned five decades and featured immense success at two schools.
To be the all-time wins leader for two different programs is rare in its own right. But to be able to put a bow on both tenures in a homecoming matchup during a retirement season is truly storybook.
“Not many people get to experience this,” Meghan McKeown said. “Not many coaches get to experience this. I think it’s going to be really emotional but also just so special, and I’m so grateful to GW for wanting to honor him the way that they’re going to.”
For Joe McKeown, a Northwestern-centric retirement ceremony is still months away. When it does arrive, his final matchup at Welsh-Ryan Arena will likely be one of NU’s most memorable contests in recent years.
But for now, Sunday’s road game offers a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reminisce about the first of McKeown’s decorated twin legacies.
