For Northwestern’s Joe McKeown and his family, a walk down memory lane

So it just made sense that Meghan returned to George Washington’s Charles E. Smith Center on Sunday for the latest milestone in her dad’s career. The Revolutionaries hosted Northwestern and honored Joe McKeown as he prepares to retire at the end of the season, after 40 years as a head coach.

“I feel like I’m the lucky one,” Joe McKeown told reporters after Sunday’s game. “… We built everything here; this was home. Northwestern’s been a great place for us. Not many coaches can say [they’ve spent] 37 years as a head coach at only two schools. So I feel like that’s the legacy that I’m proud of the most.”

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Before those 37 years in Washington and Evanston, McKeown began his head coaching career in 1986 at New Mexico State and made two NCAA Tournaments in three years. He took the GW job in 1989 and stayed with the Revolutionaries until he moved to Northwestern in 2008.

At GW, he became the program’s all-time winningest coach with 441 victories. He won 74% of his games overall and 83% of his Atlantic 10 games. The Revolutionaries made 15 NCAA Tournaments in 19 seasons, with more Sweet 16 berths (four) than first-round exits (two). In 1997, they beat Northwestern, Tulane and North Carolina en route to the Elite Eight.

In addition, his teams were ranked in the AP poll at some point in 14 of his seasons, rising as high as No. 6 in January 1992.

“I think about 441 wins. The first thought is … the amount of film he had to watch; the nights, probably sleepless nights, of thinking about a game plan; the conversations with his staff; the recruiting trips,” first-year GW head coach Ganiyat Adeduntan told reporters postgame. “… It’s really, really remarkable.”

That level of success is what Meghan grew up around. As a kid, she thought making the NCAA Tournament was something every program did regularly, and Sweet 16 berths seemed like no big deal, either. She and her family spent nearly every Thanksgiving at a tournament someplace tropical, and her younger sister, Ally, learned to swim on one such trip to the Bahamas.

And Meghan grew up idolizing her father’s players, who became the big sisters she never had. Many of them babysat her in their dorms. They introduced her to artists like Britney Spears, Ashanti and Usher, who soon became some of her favorites. She even decided she wanted to eat peanut butter straight out of the jar because guard Kristeena Alexander ate it that way.

“Growing up as a coach’s kid is the best childhood anybody could ask for, especially being a head coach’s kid,” Meghan told The IX Basketball on Dec. 15.

McKeown took the Northwestern job when Meghan was in high school. Initially, she didn’t want to play for her dad, wary of being treated differently as the coach’s daughter. But she decided it made sense to stay close to home, and she ended up loving her time playing for McKeown.

“It was definitely an amazing experience,” she said. “… Everybody kind of saw me for me, and I credit my dad a lot for that, for not making it seem like, ‘Oh, this is my daughter, Meghan.’ … He gave me the space to grow and to kind of mature into the person I was going to be.”

McKeown is also the Wildcats’ all-time winningest coach, with 274 victories and counting. He took Northwestern to the NCAA Tournament in 2015 and 2021 and has coached four WNBA draft picks there, to go along with the six future WNBA players he coached at GW.

“I consider him a legend,” one of those Northwestern draft picks, Veronica Burton, told reporters on Dec. 11. “He’s done so much for me as a player, but also as a person. He took me in when, honestly, I wasn’t getting a ton of recognition or attention or offers. … He instilled a confidence and saw a belief in me that I’ll value forever.”

Despite seeing McKeown’s career up close, Meghan didn’t realize the full extent of his legacy until she became a television analyst after college — a job that led to her calling some of her dad’s games.

“I always knew he was a really good coach because we always won … at GW,” she said. “[But] I honestly don’t think it was until I got into this field and saw how people really reacted to him that I was kind of like, ‘Wow, you really are a legend, huh?’”

Those reactions included people turning their heads when they heard her last name and asking if she was related to him. Then they would often tell her — and continue to say today — that McKeown is one of the kindest people they know.

“He’s the nicest guy,” Adeduntan said on Sunday, adding that McKeown took the time to talk with her when she was hired about his recipe for success at GW.

“He’s just, like, the nicest guy in the world. That’s what immediately comes to mind,” Carrie Moore, who has coached against McKeown as the head coach at Harvard and as an assistant at Michigan, told reporters on Dec. 17.

Meghan saw that firsthand, too, at GW, though it made her cringe at the time. At an Atlantic 10 Tournament in Philadelphia, Temple fans who were waiting for the Owls to play made it their mission to scream at McKeown throughout GW’s game. So the next day, before the Revolutionaries faced the Owls, McKeown brought Meghan and his wife, Laura, over and introduced himself and his family to the hecklers.

“Hey guys, I’m Joe,” Meghan remembers him saying. “You guys have been killing me. You guys are awesome.”

Chastened by McKeown’s gesture, those fans stayed quiet throughout the game.

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On Sunday, there was no heckling anywhere, only cheering and commemorative T-shirts. McKeown’s homecoming came about after he announced in March that 2025-26 would be his final season. Athletic director Michael Lipitz approached Adeduntan with the idea, and she immediately said yes. For her, educating her players on how good GW had been under McKeown was a vital first step in building the program back up.

“Our players need to know,” Adeduntan told The IX Basketball postgame. “I think sometimes when it seems like it’s been so long, they’re like, ‘Yeah, I know GW was good, but how good?’ So really being able to explain it to them, show them … like, ‘This is a historic program with rich tradition, and you need to know that. And every day … you’re playing for the people that came here [before you].’”

The homecoming weekend started on Saturday with a reception at The Ritz-Carlton Georgetown, about a mile from the Smith Center. GW alums Cathy Cranberg and Lisa Cermignano organized it, and McKeown said that close to 200 alums came to Washington for the weekend. Their numbers showed on Sunday at halftime, when they were honored on the court and formed a line that stretched nearly from basket to basket.

“I know we had other alums [here] who [played] under different coaches, but the fact that so many came back for him, it tells you what kind of man he is,” Adeduntan said.

McKeown walked onto the court on Sunday about two minutes before the national anthem, pausing to greet the DJ stationed near his team’s bench. Then he soaked everything in, turning his palms to the sky and looking around.

“It was so surreal to be here,” he said. “I didn’t even know where to sit at the bench. I was walking around like a zombie.”

Immediately after the national anthem, a tribute video played for McKeown. Then he, Laura, Meghan and Ally gathered at center court and watched the unveiling of a banner honoring his 441 wins at GW. The ceremony concluded with Adeduntan and Lipitz presenting McKeown with a plaque noting that win total.

“It was emotional because I just feel it,” Adeduntan said. “I feel the love that he has for this place. I feel the love that he has for his players here. And … he wants this place to be really good, because this was his home and it’s still his home. So for us to be able to recognize him in a much deserving way, it was pretty special.”

McKeown was surprised by the scale of the ceremony, but it meant a lot to him to have his family there with him. Amid the fanfare, he caught sight of a red chair honoring the late GW alum and season ticket holder Red Auerbach.

“He’d have some kind of wise-guy remark for me,” McKeown thought, “but it would have been fun to hear.”

After the ceremony, the game itself didn’t go as planned for McKeown and the Wildcats, as they fell to GW 75-62. McKeown joked that he wished he could’ve had one-day eligibility waivers for Tajama Abraham and Jessica Adair, two GW post players he coached who played in the WNBA and were in attendance on Sunday.

In his postgame press conference, McKeown reflected on his tenure at GW, telling stories about certain games and mentioning some of his first and best teams. He recalled how two-time All-American Jennifer Shasky needed to fly to Michigan to interview for a Rhodes Scholarship as the No. 11 Revolutionaries were preparing to play No. 21 Connecticut in December 1992. He was fully supportive, but he also wondered, “Does any other program have to deal with this?” The Revolutionaries ended up losing by 2 points.

Twice in the early 2000s, McKeown got then-Tennessee head coach Pat Summitt to play at the Smith Center.

“We always expected to win,” McKeown said. “… I remember our players [were] like, ‘We’re going to beat Tennessee tonight.’ And unfortunately, Pat had something to say [about that], too.”

When McKeown was asked what advice he’d give the version of himself who took the GW job in 1989, he had an immediate answer. “Stay out of the traffic, man, on the Beltway,” he half-joked. “That’s where I spent half my time, it feels like.”

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McKeown hasn’t had much time or inclination during the season to think about his upcoming retirement. He’s more consumed with watching film and preparing for the next game. It hasn’t fully sunk in for Meghan yet, either. But when the season inevitably ends, Meghan thinks McKeown will be ready. He has a 10-month-old grandson and namesake, Joseph James, who goes by JJ, and Meghan is excited to spend more time together.

Some of that family time might still center around basketball. Meghan’s husband, Patrick Wallace, is an assistant coach for the Iona men’s team, and Meghan said he’d welcome an extra voice from the stands.

“We need a little Monday morning quarterbacking, 1,000%,” she said.

But before McKeown trades his front-row seat for backseat coaching, he has some more wins to try to chase down. Though he didn’t add to his ledger on Sunday, the weekend was a memorable tribute to his success and longevity. With alums from throughout his GW career in the stands and his main two programs facing off, it was like a series of time capsules exploded in the Smith Center, merging past and present and providing an early dose of Christmas cheer.