Leading a team that finished last in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference's East Division last year to the East Division championship this year, first-year Clark Atlanta University head coach Yolanda Moore has been named the 2018 SIAC Women's Coach of the Year, the conference announced Sunday.

In a vote of the SIAC's head coaches and sports information directors, Moore was chosen after leading her Lady Panthers to a 17-8 overall record and a 14-3 conference record that included an eight-game winning streak late this season.

"I give all glory to God and I'm grateful for the position He put me in," Moore said. "I'm very humbled because I don't ever set out to win individual awards.  But it is nice to be recognized for the work you put in.  I definitely attribute that to having a great assistant coach in Coach Antonio Bailey who had to pick up the slack more times than not, come in and work tirelessly to be able to help me bring the vision I had for the program into fruition.  

"I appreciate the players, I appreciate the coaching staff, our Athletic Director J Lin Dawson, the administration and President Ronald A. Johnson for just believing in my ability to lead these young ladies."

Moore is a two-time WNBA champion (1997 and 1998) as a forward with the Houston Comets and a three-time All-Southeastern Conference pick as a star at the University of Mississippi from 1992-96.

The Port Gibson, Miss., native, who was a Parade High School All-American as a senior at Port Gibson High School, has led programs at LSU Eunice where they went 26-4 in her single season there, and Southeastern Louisiana where her team won 15 games and she developed a trio of All-Southland Conference players.

This season she led a team that was the only SIAC team that ended the regular season ranked among the conference's top four teams in scoring offense and scoring defense.  Coaching a team that only had nine players available for most of the second half of the season, Moore had three players who were named to the All-SIAC team – first teamer Marissa Mandeldove, and second team picks Naomi Holloway and Lauren Turner – and the league's Freshman and Newcomer of the Year in Holloway. 

"As a player it's not just hard for a new coach coming in, but it's hard for players to adapt to a new coach, to have their whole way of thinking, their whole way of approaching the game completely disrupted, and to be able to be willing to learn a different way, to be able to stretch themselves and grow," Moore said of her team. "To have to say I'm very blessed to be in a situation where the kids wanted, they not only needed what myself and the coaches had to offer, but they wanted it.  They worked and they did everything that we asked them to.  They gave of themselves and they sacrificed for the team.  Getting up at 4 or 5 in the morning for practice and no complaints.  Just wanting something different and believing in me and I just appreciate them."