Wife and husband coaching duo hoping to revive FIU Panthers women’s basketball

Jesyka Burks-Wiley, who is 6-1, and Dan Wendt, who’s 6-8, met on the internet, each one looking for someone tall.

On their second date, logically, they played basketball, winding up on opposing teams in a game among coaches.

“I blocked her shot early on, and she was pissed,” Wendt said. “But then, to end the game, she came off a screen and hit a jumper over me. She celebrated and yelled, ‘Let’s go!’”

Five years later — on August 24, 2019 — these two competitive people married.

But now they have signed on for an even bigger challenge than marriage — coaching an FIU women’s basketball program that is 32-144 over the past six years.

Burks-Wiley, a 33-year-old first-time head coach, was hired in April, inheriting a program that has endured seven losing seasons in a row.

Then, three months after arriving at FIU, Burks-Wiley made an eyebrow-raising hire — her husband.

Wendt, 34, will coach FIU’s wings as one of three Panthers assistants.

“If he weren’t my husband, I don’t know if we could afford him,” Burks-Wiley said when asked if some could see hiring Wendt as a form of nepotism. “He brings a wealth of knowledge to our girls.”

Robyn Scherr-Wells will coach FIU’s post players. Tim Sylver, who Burks-Wiley worked with at USF, will coach FIU’s point guards. But it is the Wendt hire that is particularly intriguing.

Wendt’s big selling point is that he has worked as part of two NBA organizations: New Orleans Pelicans and Boston Celtics. He has also helped train talented players for the NBA Draft, including Kristaps Porzingis, Myles Turner, Domantas Sabonis and Ja Morant.

Those players taught Wendt about the traits shared by All-Stars — work ethic, confidence and integrity — lessons he will pass on to FIU’s players.

“My niche is player development,” Wendt said. “I plan to kill it on skills — teaching shooting technique and footwork, working on the pick and roll.”

ONLINE LOVE

The Jesyka-Dan story began in 2014, when Burks-Wiley — if only to silence her friends who wanted her to couple up — engaged in some online dating. That’s how she met Wendt, who drove an hour from his home for the date at World of Beer, a tavern in Lowell, Massachusetts.

“Our first date lasted four hours,” Burks-Wiley said. “At the end of it, I definitely wanted to move forward with Dan as my boyfriend.”

Basketball was their immediate bond.

Burks-Wiley, who is from Kansas City, was a forward at Boston University. As a senior, she averaged 17.9 points and 7.3 rebounds, and she was named the America East Player of the Year in 2009. She’s one of just eight Boston University players to finish her career with at least 1,000 points and 500 rebounds.

After Boston, her pro playing career included stops in Finland, Belgium, Romania and Portugal. Then, her coaching career included stints as an assistant for Nebraska-Omaha, UMass-Lowell, Brown, Boston College and USF.

In addition, she comes from a basketball family that includes her cousin Alec Burks, who plays for the Philadelphia 76ers.

Wendt, a native of San Jose, California, played for Chaminade University of Honolulu, an NCAA Division II school.

As a coach, he served as a player development assistant with the Pelicans. He also worked with the Boston Celtics as an assistant coach for their D-League team, the Maine Red Claws.

When this basketball-obsessed couple married last year in Indiana, they were introduced to the wedding party by the warmup music that plays at Chicago Bulls games — perfectly fitting for two coaches.

“The lifestyle is unique,” Burks-Wiley said of coaching. “It’s special to have a partner who loves and understands the 14-hour days, being in the gym for 20 straight days.”

TURNAROUND TIME?

At FIU, they will try to revive a program that made the NCAA Tournament six times from 1994 to 2002 under former coach Cindy Russo.

But since Russo resigned in the middle of a 3-26 nightmare in 2015, FIU’s program has failed miserably, losing more than 20 games in each of the past six seasons under Marlin Chinn and then Tiara Malcom.

“The numbers don’t lie,” Burks-Wiley said when asked about the program she inherits. “But I’m encouraged to know what [Russo] accomplished with half the amenities we have now.”

FIU returns three of its top four starters from last season. The roster includes eight seniors, two juniors, four sophomores and no freshmen.

“These girls have a hungry spirit,” Burks-Wiley said. “When I met the returners, they said, ‘Coach, we’re so much better than our record’.”

Now they get to prove their talent, and the same goes for Burks-Wiley and Wendt, who want to follow a recent trend of successful wife-husband coaching duos in women’s basketball. That list includes schools such as Gonzaga (head coach Lisa Fortier, assistant Craig Fortier) and Arizona (head coach Adia Barnes, assistant Salvo Coppa).

Wendt said he and his wife are thrilled to be at FIU.

“We work every day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and we don’t even notice it,” Wendt said.

“That’s because we’re living in the moment. We work together all day, and then we go home and talk basketball over dinner. We love it, especially now that this is our program, and we are fully engulfed.

“I have a servant’s mindset. I’m here to help [Burks-Wiley] in anything she asks.”