Dee Knoblauch Hometown: St. Clair Shores, Michigan High School: Lake Shore Position: Head Coach Birthdate: 08/11/1961 Experience: Third year

Dee Knoblauch, a Bowling Green State University alumna, enters her third season as the Falcon head coach. Knoblauch (pronounced: kuh-NOB-low), named the coach at her alma mater August 21, 1998, became just the sixth person to assume the helm in the storied 26-year history of Falcon women's basketball.

Last winter, Knoblauch guided the Falcons to five consecutive wins before BGSU fell in the quarterfinal round of the Mid-American Conference Tournament. The Brown and Orange played an exciting brand of basketball, and led the nation in both three-point field goals made and free-throw percentage.

A native of St. Clair Shores, Mich., Knoblauch has guided the Brown and Orange to a 24-31 record in her first two seasons. She now has an overall mark of 206-150 in 13 years as a collegiate head coach.

Knoblauch, one of those responsible for bringing the program to prominence, returned to Northwest Ohio after spending 11 years as the head coach at Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio. In that time, she posted a record of 182-119 (.605). Over her last five years, the Purple Raiders were one of the top NCAA Division III teams in the nation, going 116-32 (.784) and making three trips to the NCAA Tournament. Mount Union went to the NCAA “Final Four” twice, including in Knoblauch’s final season there, and advanced as far as the “Sweet 16" on another occasion.

Knoblauch’s 1997-98 team set a school single-season record for wins, going 29-3 and winning the Ohio Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament titles en route to the appearance in the national semifinals. Mount finished third nationally that season. For her efforts, Knoblauch earned a plethora of Coach-of-the-Year honors, including OAC, NCAA District 3 and Ohio C-O-Y awards.

Knoblauch also had earned the OAC Coach of the Year award in 1994, and she captured the NCAA District 3 honor in 1996.

Upon her arrival at MUC in 1987, Knoblauch inherited a team that had finished 7-16 the previous year. After a 7-19 record in her first campaign, she guided the program, slowly but surely, to a better record each year for the next five campaigns. By her fourth season (1990-91), Knoblauch had already become the winningest coach in school history.

Mount’s win total increased to 14 by the 1991-92 campaign, the first of seven consecutive winning seasons at the school.

Those 14 victories marked a school single-season record, but Knoblauch was just getting started. That record was subsequently broken four more times by Knoblauch-coached teams.

In 1993-94, Knoblauch’s squad posted the first 20-win season in school annals, going 20-7. The following winter, the Purple Raiders posted a stellar 24-6 record and made the first NCAA appearance in school history, advancing to the round of 16.

The Raiders had had a taste of national tourney play, and the team went back for seconds the following year. The 1995-96 squad advanced all the way to the national championship game before succumbing, finishing with a 25-8 mark.

After losing four starters from that squad, the Raiders posted “only” 18 victories the following year, before once again shattering the school record with 29 wins in Knoblauch’s final winter in Alliance. Mount Union again went to the NCAA Tournament, falling in the semifinal round but bouncing back to win the third-place contest.

In addition to the success enjoyed on the court, Knoblauch’s teams have fared well in the classroom, too. Her Mount squads perennially earned a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better, and her final MUC team had a cumulative GPA of 3.417, which ranked 17th nationally among NCAA Division III programs.

Knoblauch’s BGSU team posted a cumulative GPA of 3.12 through the 1999-2000 academic year. In her first two years, the Falcons have had two Academic All-District selections and one Academic All-America honoree.

While at Mount Union, Knoblauch’s duties included coaching the women’s tennis team as well as teaching classes in the School of Health and Physical Education. In the spring of 1998, Knoblauch was named the OAC’s Coach of the Year for women’s tennis. She previously had coached women’s soccer at MUC and was the league’s C-O-Y in 1988.

Prior to her lengthy stay in Alliance, Knoblauch spent a year (1986-87) as a women’s basketball graduate assistant coach at Eastern Michigan. The then-Hurons went 13-13 that season, finishing in a fourth-place tie in the MAC with an 8-8 mark.

From 1983-86, Knoblauch was the head girls’ basketball and volleyball coach at Clearview High School in Lorain, Ohio.

Knoblauch earned four letters for coach Kathy Bole as an undergraduate at BGSU (1979-83). A point guard, she was a two-time captain and a three-time team Most Valuable Player for the Falcons. She started all but one game in her BG career, and her name still can be found throughout the school record books.

Knoblauch holds all of the school’s assist records: single-game (18), season (229) and career (673). In fact, Knoblauch led the MAC in that category in each of the first two seasons that the league sponsored women's sports, dishing out 229 helpers as a junior (1981-82) and 166 assists as a senior (1982-83). Additionally, Knoblauch ranks second at the school in career steals, with 218.

In her final two seasons, the Brown and Orange went 32-22 and posted a pair of fifth-place MAC finishes.

A two-time All-league second-team selection, Knoblauch was named to the Academic All-MAC First Team for the Falcons in her senior season.

Knoblauch graduated Cum Laude from BGSU in 1983, majoring in physical education with a minor in health and coaching. She earned a Master’s Degree in physical education from Eastern Michigan in 1987.

In February of 2000, Knoblauch was named to the BGSU women’s basketball “All-Century Team,” selected by fan balloting through the Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune. Knoblauch was chosen to the second team.