Knox native Adrienne Shibles’ tremendous success at Division III Bowdoin College in Brunswick did not translate to success at the Division I level.
Shibles stepped down from her head coach position at Dartmouth College earlier this week after posting a 5-49 record in her two seasons at the Ivy League school in Hanover, New Hampshire.
The Big Green went 2-26 in conference play during her tenure, including an 0-14 record this past season.
Dartmouth was 2-26 overall this past season. It is the team’s fewest wins in a season since the 1975-76 squad went 1-8.
“We are thankful to Adrienne for her contributions to Dartmouth Athletics and wish her all the best moving forward,” Dartmouth Athletics and Recreation Director Mike Harrity said in a statement.
Shibles inherited a messy program, including just one winning season since the 2008-09 team went 18-11 and earned the program its seventh and last NCAA Tournament appearance.
Dartmouth went 107-199 from the 2009-10 season until the 2021-22 campaign when Shibles replaced Belle Koclanes. Koclanes left to become the president of a nonprofit organization.
Dartmouth has yet to qualify for the Ivy League playoff tournament since its inception in 2016-17. The top four teams from the eight-team league qualify for the tournament.
Shibles compiled a 281-67 record in her 12 seasons at Bowdoin, including an 89-28 mark in NESCAC regular season play. She is the school’s winningest women’s basketball coach.
She guided the Polar Bears to 11 NCAA Division III Tournament berths including eight Sweet 16 berths and a pair of championship game appearances.
Bowdoin lost to NESCAC rival Amherst in the 2017-18 national championship game 65-45 and to Thomas More University of Kentucky 81-67 in the title game the following year.
She was named the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Division III National Coach of the Year in 2019 and was a two-time NESCAC Coach of the Year.
Her last Bowdoin team in 2019-20 went 27-2 and reached the third round of the NCAA Tournament when the rest of the season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shibles was the head coach of the United States’ Under-16 girls team in the 2021 FIBA Americas championships in Chile and she led her team to the gold medal by virtue of a 118-45 victory over Canada in the final.
Shibles is in the Maine Sports Hall of Fame and the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame.
She has more than 400 coaching wins and led Swarthmore College to a Centennial Conference championship and its first NCAA Division III Tournament appearance in 2001.
As a player, Shibles was a two-year captain at Bates College in Lewiston where she was a 1,000-point scorer.
She was an outstanding athlete at Thorndike’s Mount View High School and helped lead the Mustangs to a Class B North title in the 1987 season. Mount View lost to Messalonskee of Oakland 38-36 in the state championship game.
