As Brady Sallee stepped to the podium to accept the Eastern women’s basketball head coaching job, he knew he at least had his two-year-old daughter’s approval.

“There’s daddy,” Avery Sallee said.

After 11 years as an assistant coach, Sallee is confident he can not only succeed as a head coach, but also revive the Panthers program, which hasn’t had a winning season in a decade.

Eastern decided to not renew the contract of Linda Wunder after the former coach led the Panthers to a 36-101 record in five seasons.

“It feels right to be a head coach,” Sallee said. “When I started talking about the interview, my friends in the business told me ‘Brady, you’re ready’.”

The Panthers hired Sallee, a former assistant coach at East Carolina and Kent State, to the position Friday after going through over 100 applications and a month-long interview process involving four candidates.

“We saw a lot of fine coaches around the country which made it a very tough process,” Director of Athletics Rich McDuffie said. “Brady made this an easier choice because he promised success from the beginning.”

Sallee had been keeping track of Eastern’s record over the past two seasons because he felt the Panthers had been underachieving during the Wunder era.

“To be honest, I’d kept my eye on it for a while and would think to myself that they ought to be doing better than that. That’s when I began to believe I could be successful.”

Sallee talked about how he expects a new winning attitude from his Panther players from day one at the helm.

“I told this group that I’m not a very patient person almost to a fault,” Sallee said. “This will not be a rebuilding process, this is will be a successful process. I’m not going to say that it’ll take two or three years before I get my players; these are my players.”

The scheme Sallee intends to implement at Eastern is another quality that attracted him to McDuffie and the search committee.

“My idea of coaching is pressure whether it’s full or half-court. Our defense will create offense for us to be a high scoring team,” Sallee said.

“He wants to play that up-tempo style which is what fans want to see nowadays,” McDuffie said.

With four starters returning and quality guards off the bench, Sallee recognized that his team won’t have problems putting the ball in the hoop.

“I know that they can shoot the basketball, and so I’m smart enough to realize that’s a major strength on this team,” Sallee said.

The one critical aspect that only Sallee mentioned during the interview process and at the announcement was his responsibility to fill Lantz Arena to capacity.

“It’s important to have fans in the stands so that my players can run out on the floor into an atmosphere and those chill bumps start to pop up,” Sallee said. “I’m interested in going out in the public. All I’ll ask is come once and I promise you’ll come back.”

Sallee has a theory on how Eastern’s schedule can accomplish this promise.

“We need to schedule big name schools at Lantz like Virgina and Boston College,” Sallee said. “I know a lot of those coaches and it’s not that difficult to do. All you say to them is no, you don’t have to buy us, you come here and we’ll go there.”

As a Division I recruiting coordinator at Kent State, Sallee has proved he can land prospects in the midwest area. He also stressed the amount of time he plans on doing the recruiting legwork himself.

“My responsibility there was Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin so that won’t be a problem,” Sallee said. “I want to stay extremely involved in recruiting. It’s the most important aspect of college basketball so why would you give that to somebody that I wouldn’t trust as much as myself.”

Sallee made clear that being a midwest guy would make this transition easier for him and his family. McDuffie stated picking a candidate that would stick around was important but would like to give him an opportunity to move up the ladder if that day comes.

“My wife and I are from the midwest and we want to be here,” Sallee said. “This is where I want to settle down with my family.”

“If after two conference championships, a school like Illinois comes calling, it’s our responsibility for us to shake his hand and say it’s time to move on. If it comes to that, we’d be happy to do it.”