TEMPE, Ariz. -- Charli Turner Thorne is the second longest tenured women's basketball coach in the Pac-12, and only 18 women across the nation have been on the job longer than Arizona State's coach.
In her 18 seasons in Tempe, Turner Thorne has led the Sun Devils to a Pac-12 title, 10 NCAA Tournament berths, four Sweet Sixteens and two Elite Eights.
With nine players returning from last season's Sweet Sixteen team and a deeper perspective on coaching following her 2011-12 sabbatical, Turner Thorne wants more. She wants the program's first Pac-12 title since 2000-01, she wants more respect for the entire conference and she wants that elusive Final Four berth.
Before the Sun Devils open their season on Sunday against Kentucky at Wells Fargo Arena, we caught up with the always-engaging, ever-driven Sun Devils icon to discuss the dueling demands of coaching and motherhood, the holistic benefits of her sabbatical and the challenges of the season ahead.
You are entering your fourth season since your sabbatical. What is your long view on the benefits of time away?
Turner Thorne: "It was amazing. I think anybody in any profession who gets some time to step away and get some clarity on how you can improve and rethink the way you do things would benefit.
"Coaching is such a crazy profession. It's not super healthy. You work every day and it's just getting worse, so a huge impetus for this was that I had lost that balance. I wasn't the mom I wanted to be. I wasn't the wife I wanted to be. I wasn't practicing what I preached."
You have talked many times about all the introspection and research you did to improve your coaching while you were away. What did you do when you weren't being a coach?
Turner Thorne: "I had this impromptu bucket list of stuff. I had never been home my entire life when my kids had gotten home from school. Not one day. That was pretty cool, experiencing some things as a mom that probably most moms get to much earlier.
"We had a vacation in July, which most Arizonans have done, but I had never done because that's my recruiting window. I think we went to San Diego and hit the beach. We had a fall break in October, too. The kids were off school and just hung out and stayed home. It was a normal calendar. I went to a lot of my kids stuff and it was incredibly rewarding."
How has coaching helped you as a parent, and vice versa?
Turner Thorne: "Coaching maybe made me a little better parent because you are constantly teaching and mentoring and having to have patience. Parenthood creates balance, but it also requires teaching and mentoring and patience and helping young people be the best they can be -- live in the moment, enjoy their experiences and yet work toward a goal.
"Basketball is a little different because we have to push them out of their comfort zone, but it's actually getting a little bit to that stage with my teenagers so I think the two really complement each other."
Was it odd coming back to the program after a 8½ months away?
Turner Thorne: "It was weird because everything here is about relationships. I really respected the fact that there was a coaching staff here running the program so I really tried not to interfere and allow them to be the mentors and coaches for this team. I didn't want the players second-guessing them or anybody so I really stayed away which is hard because I really loved these kids. With the five seniors that were here, it was especially hard, but I decided if I'm going to unplug then really unplug; really do it.
"You go 8½ months without really working on relationships, when you come back you have a lot of work to do. I felt it immediately. Normally, I'm really connected and I wasn't."
The team missed the Tournament in your first year back, after graduating five seniors, but in the two years since, you have been back in the NCAA field. How were you able to get it rolling again so quickly?
Turner Thorne: "I think knowing how to do things was part of it. It wasn't like I was new to this, but we had had a good team that year before I came back, and then we graduated five seniors and we didn’t get any recruiting done and we lost some kids -- some kids de-committed -- so technically you could say we lost two recruiting classes.
"We definitely re-evaluated the places we were recruiting but we knew how to do this and in this sport, you just have to find the right kids. You look at the junior class right now with Sophie Brunner, Kelsey Moos, Quinn Dornstauder and Qiana Levy; those are phenomenal character kids. After we got back, we hustled to fill out the roster and that was the first class, but from there we've really tried to build on it and be selective."
You return nine key players from last season, but you lost a big one in Promise Amukamara. What's your overall take on this roster?
Turner Thorne: "It does give you a sense of calm when you know you have eight (of nine) players that played a lot, that were significant contributors and know what we need to do. But Promise, that's a big hole to fill. Promise meant this for us: 'OK, there's their best player. Now she's neutralized.' How nice is that?
"We're grooming some potential replacements but it's early. We're looking for people to step up. Our helper culture has to be on this season. We have to really be working together."
You have a unique situation with a lot of upper classmen and then four key freshman. How will that work?
Turner Thorne: "Our rotation might be a little tight early on and then by the time we get to conference most of these freshmen are going to be able to help us which is nice because we like to go deep in our bench, play hard, play fast and rest our top kids a little bit so they can be more efficient and effective.
"This freshman class, they're very talented and athletic. It's just they've been put on a team where everybody knows what they're doing -- this well-oiled machine. You throw them in and it’s like 'blink, blink.'"
You have been to four Sweet Sixteens and two Elite Eights, but we know you want that Final Four badly.
Turner Thorne: "We do. Really, we do! This team absolutely has prepared their mind that they can achieve that and when you think about it, we were one possession away from the Elite Eight (last season) and we have eight players returning. One or two more games seems doable. A lot of things have to happen, some that aren't even in their control, but we've prepared our mind through the offseason that we can do it.
"We have the schedule to do it, too. This preseason schedule will test us like never before, which will prepare us for conference and postseason. We'll play South Carolina in a couple weeks and they're No. 2 in the country and probably will have more talent than anybody. Once you've played teams like that, there's not much you haven’t seen.
"But we really don't spend a lot of time thinking about it because there are so many things you can't control. We just say, 'let's be in the present. What do you we need to get better at?"
Is coaching as much fun for you as the day you started?
Turner Thorne: "It is, and that's a tribute to the people I work with every day, the staff I have and the players that are in our program. It’s fun. We don’t have drama. The biggest drama is helping them with their mental game to play well. They're just great kids and a great staff."
Are you a different person than the one who started that sabbatical?
Turner Thorne: "When you step away and you come back -- my perspective forever will be better because you just get so down in it you lose that perspective. You kind of have to be that way. You have to have that intense and all-consuming approach. At the same time, not to the point where you make yourself sick or suck the joy out of it for yourself or any other people. I've gotten to this point in my career and I literally say to myself: 'I don’t know how much longer I'm going to do this. So enjoy it.'
"When you’re younger, you’re thinking you’re going to do this 20 or 30 more years, but I have a much greater understanding of everything now and I really think my time out was immensely helpful for that.”