University of South Alabama head women’s basketball coach Terry Fowler announced Wednesday that Mansa El has been hired as assistant coach.
A former all-Sun Belt Conference selection for the Jaguars, El has experience coaching on both the high school and collegiate levels.
“I’m extremely excited to have Coach El join our staff. She is a Jaguar and I can’t think of a better person to represent our program,” Fowler said. “She has coached at multiple levels of basketball including both high school and college, I feel her wealth of experience has prepared her to be a valuable asset to our staff on and off the floor. She’s highly disciplined, self motivated and smart; the fact that she was the head coach of a boy’s high school basketball team speaks volumes about the respect people have for her knowledge of the game.
“Mansa was an all-Sun Belt performer during her collegiate career at South Alabama, she will be a great resource for both our student-athletes and recruits. Coach El is a special young lady, we’re glad to welcome her back to the program and the university.”
For the last three years, El has served as assistant varsity coach for the boy’s team at Cypress Springs (Texas) High School, where her responsibilities included in-game play calls, scouting opponents, planning and executing the team’s strength and conditioning program, and constructing preseason practice plans. Her first season with the team the Panthers finished 24-10 overall following a first-round victory in the region tournament, while the next winter her efforts helped CSHS go 27-10 — including sharing the district title with a 14-2 mark — while advancing to the second round of the region tournament. During that time, El was the head coach for the school’s freshman ‘A’ team during the 2017-18 campaign and the head coach of the junior varsity team the last two years. She also worked with the FAM Elite AAU program at the same time, serving as head coach of the 15-and-under team as well as an assistant with the 16- and 17-and under squads.
El began her coaching career as an assistant at West Virginia Wesleyan during the 2013-14 season, moving on to become a graduate assistant on the staff at Houston the following year. She performed in that role for two seasons before being elevated to interim assistant coach for the 2015-16 campaign, then was hired in a full-time assistant capacity at Canisius the next season.
A two-year letterwinner at South, El posted 691 points, 247 rebounds, 162 assists and 78 steals in 69 career appearanes for the Jaguars. She was named third-team all-Sun Belt as a redshirt junior after averaging 12.1 points and 3.2 rebounds per contest, and the following season she posted averages of 9.6 points and 4.3 rebounds; her efforts helped lead USA to a 17-13 finish each of those years.
El began her collegiate career at North Texas, where she recorded 200 points, 107 rebounds and 72 assists in 31 contests — including starting 29 times — during the 2008-09 season, while the following year she scored 13.5 points per outing and connected on 52 three-pointers to be named first-team all-conference at Tallahassee (Fla.) C.C. Her efforts there helped the Lady Eagles end up 12th in the final National Junior College Athletic Association poll after finishing 20-9 overall.
El received her bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies from South in 2013 and her master’s degree in human resource development from Houston in 2016.
She joins a staff that led the Jags to a 16-16 record last season after advancing to the semifinals of the Sun Belt Conference Tournament, which was cancelled due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, with victories in their first two games in the event.
