Kellie Harper was a three-time national champion during her playing days with the Tennessee women’s basketball program. After making her mark on the court, Harper has turned into one of the top young coaches in the country and has turned around the program at Western Carolina during her four-year tenure.

Last year, Harper led the Lady Catamounts to 24 wins – a school record. This season, Western Carolina already has 23 wins and has locked in a No. 2 seed for the Southern Conference tournament.

Earlier this week on the Double-A Zone (www.doubleazone.com), Harper talked about her team’s success on the floor, as well as her pride in its 3.44 grade-point average this past fall. The former honorable mention all-American also discusses the influence Pat Summitt has had on her and what it’s like to work with her husband Jon, who is an assistant coach at Western Carolina.

Excerpts from the podcast are included below. To listen to the entire conversation, click here. Read the blog post here.

Q: Success hasn’t come only on the court - you stress academics for your student-athletes. Tell me why that’s so vital to the program?

A: We recruit intelligent kids who have capabilities to succeed in the classroom and then we follow through with it when they get to campus. We make sure they’re going to class and we make sure to put them in study hall when they need to be in study hall. And they’ve succeeded. Last year we finished up 15th in the country academically…our kids not only have been successful on the court, they’ve done a great job in the classroom.

Q: How much has Coach Summitt influenced you?

A: I would love to be Pat Summitt and I would love to coach like her. But if I tried to do that, it would not work. That’s not who I am. I would be crazy not to try to learn from her and take things from her. When I became a head coach, I wanted our program to be classy – I thought Pat ran a classy program at Tennessee. And she was always very poised and I wanted to be that type of coach.

Q: Your husband is actually an assistant with the program. How does that interaction work on a daily basis on the bench and in the office?

A: I would say it works fine…he might say differently. Actually, it’s really a neat dynamic. You want to work with people you like and I absolutely love my staff. Jon is very good with late-game situations, knowing when we need timeouts and understanding time of possession. Because of that, I can continue to coach and watch the X’s and O’s, which is my strength. If we didn’t work together, we wouldn’t see each other a whole lot. We feel like it really works and our kids enjoy it.