Beth Morgan (basketball)

Beth Morgan Cunningham (born Beth Morgan on June 5, 1975 in Greenville, Ohio) is a former associate Head Coach at Notre Dame and had been the women's basketball head coach at Virginia Commonwealth University and a former women's basketball player.

Beth Cunningham

Duke Blue Devils
Position	Assistant coach
League	Atlantic Coast Conference
Personal information
Born	(1975-06-05) June 5, 1975 Greenville, Ohio
Nationality	American
Listed height	6 ft 0 in (1.83 m)
Listed weight	150 lb (68 kg)
Career information
High school	Bloomington South (Bloomington, Indiana)
College	Notre Dame (1993–1997)
Position	Shooting guard
Number	21
Coaching career	2001–present
Career history
As player:
1997–1998	Philadelphia Rage
2000	Washington Mystics
As coach:
2001–2003	VCU (assistant/assoc. HC)
2003–2012	VCU
2012–2020	Notre Dame (assistant)
2020–present	Duke (assistant)
Medals Women's Basketball Representing the  United States World University Games 1997 Marsala Team Competition Pan American Games 1999 Winnipeg Team Competition

As Beth Morgan, she played for the University of Notre Dame, the Richmond Rage/Philadelphia Rage of the American Basketball League and the Washington Mystics of the WNBA before turning to coaching.

She also played on the American teams in 1997 World University Games [1] and the 1999 Pan-American Games.[2]

Cunningham ranked as #1 on Notre Dame's all-time scoring list with 2,322 points, until surpassed by Skylar Diggins. Diggins had played 17 more games than Cunningham did at Notre Dame. Had Morgan had 17 more games during her Notre Dame career no one would have ever broken her scoring record. During her career, she set or tied 28 school records. In her final two seasons, she was a first team all-Big-East selection.

Cunningham took over the VCU Rams for the 2003–2004 season after serving as assistant coach of the team for two years.

Her father, Bob Morgan, was the head baseball coach at Indiana University for 22 years before retiring in 2005.[3] Beth Cunningham joined the Duke women’s basketball program in July of 2020 and serves as an assistant coach with the Blue Devils.

Cunningham, who owns 19 years of collegiate experience including nine as a head coach, arrived in Durham from Notre Dame where she helped lead the Irish to one of the best stretches in NCAA history with a 244-19 record over a span of seven seasons (2013-19). This run of success included the 2018 National Championship, five NCAA Final Four appearances and six conference championships.

Overall, Cunningham spent eight seasons at Notre Dame and 11 years at Virginia Commonwealth, including nine as head coach. During her eight years with the Irish, Cunningham coached seven WNBA First Round Draft selections and nine overall picks. Cunningham worked alongside Hall of Fame honoree Muffet McGraw and helped lead the Irish to seven straight 30-win seasons. Notre Dame advanced to the NCAA Final Four in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018 and 2019 while winning the 2018 National Championship.

During her tenure in South Bend, Cunningham molded Notre Dame’s perimeter offense into one of the nation’s best. The Irish broke the program record for most made three-pointers in the 2016-17 season (217), but also claimed the top-five spots in the record book in five of her final seven years (190 in 2013-14; 186 in 2014-15, 207 in 2015-16 and 185 in 2017-18).

When the Irish went to back-to-back NCAA title games in 2018 and 2019, Notre Dame’s offense operated at its best in program history. The 2018 national championship squad ranked second all-time in points (3,234) and scoring average (85.1 ppg), and fifth in field goal percentage (.502). During the Big Dance, the Irish poured in 523 total points, which ranked fourth all-time in the history of the tournament and the best in program history.

The Irish followed that up with a runner-up finish in the 2019 NCAA Championship, finishing the year with the No. 1 scoring offense in the country, averaging 88.6 points per game. The Irish also posted the second-best shooting percentage (.508) and scoring margin (23.6).

Before returning to Notre Dame in the summer of 2012, Cunningham took the VCU women’s basketball program to new heights in her 11 seasons, spending one year as an assistant coach (2001-02) and another as associate head coach (2002-03) before assuming the head coaching duties prior to the 2003-04 campaign. She is the Rams’ all-time leader in women’s basketball coaching wins, having successfully piloted VCU to a 167-115 (.592) record and postseason appearances in each of her final five seasons, including the program’s first NCAA Tournament berth in 2009. Under her tutelage, VCU also averaged better than 22 wins per season in a five-year stretch from 2008-12, amassing three consecutive 20-win campaigns from 2008-10 including back-to-back school-record 26-win seasons in 2007-08 and 2008-09.

A two-time Virginia Coach of the Year honoree by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Cunningham coached three WNBA Draft picks and two All-America selections, as well as two Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) Players of the Year and 18 all-conference selections during her tenure at VCU. Among her more notable pupils were Quanitra Hollingsworth, a first round selection (No. 9 overall) in the 2009 WNBA Draft by the Minnesota Lynx, and Courtney Hurt, a 2012 third round selection by the Indiana Fever who was among the nation’s leaders in scoring and rebounding during her final two seasons.

Much like her coaching career at VCU, Cunningham was a trailblazer during her playing days at Notre Dame from 1993-97 (when she competed under her maiden name of Beth Morgan), not only helping the Fighting Irish transition from the Midwestern Collegiate Conference (now the Horizon League) into the BIG EAST Conference in 1995-96, but then leading the program to the first NCAA Women’s Final Four appearance and a (then) record-setting 31-7 campaign as a senior in 1996-97. A two-time Associated Press and WBCA honorable mention All-America choice, four-time first-team all-conference selection and two-year team captain, Cunningham sparked Notre Dame to a 97-32 (.752) record in her four seasons under the Golden Dome, including a pair of MCC regular season titles and the 1994 MCC postseason crown, as well as three NCAA Championship appearances (1994, 1996, 1997).

When all was said and done, Cunningham departed as the all-time leading scorer in Fighting Irish women’s basketball history with 2,322 points (now second behind Skylar Diggins), having set or tied 28 school records during her career.

Following her successful college career, Cunningham spent three seasons in the American professional basketball ranks, playing two seasons with the Richmond/Philadelphia Rage of the now-defunct American Basketball League (ABL) from 1997-98, and then one year with the WNBA’s Washington Mystics in 2000 before embarking on her coaching career.

Cunningham also was a fixture in USA Basketball circles as both a player and coach, first suiting up for Team USA four times from 1996-99 (winning three medals including a gold with the 1997 USA World University Games Team) and serving as the athlete representative on the USA Basketball Women’s Junior National Team Committee since 2009 after spending time in a similar role on the USA Basketball Women’s Collegiate Committee from 2005-08.

Cunningham graduated from Notre Dame in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the top-ranked Mendoza College of Business. She then went on to earn her master’s degree of education in sports leadership from VCU in 2003.

Originally from Bloomington, Ind., Cunningham was a standout two-sport performer at Bloomington South High School, earning all-state honors in both basketball and tennis and subsequently being inducted into the Monroe County Sports Hall of Fame in June 2011. What’s more, her father, Bob Morgan, was the longtime baseball coach at Indiana University from 1984-2005, leading the Hoosiers to more than 1,000 victories during his career.

Cunningham and her husband, Dan (a former practice player for the Notre Dame women’s basketball program and a 1996 graduate of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business), are the proud parents of three daughters (Margaret, Carly and Gretchen) and one son (Danny).