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TUCSON, AZ - JANUARY 06: An Arizona Wildcats cheerleader prior to a women's basketball game between the BYU Cougars and the Arizona Wildcats on January 6, 2026, at McKale Center in Tucson, AZ. (Photo by Christopher Hook/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) | Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
When asked why she landed in the coaching profession, Arizona women’s basketball assistant Devan Newman immediately talks about family. She is following in the footsteps of her father. the late Don “Duck” Newman.
The elder Newman, also known as Coach New, was a college coach for a decade and an NBA assistant for almost two decades. He even spent a year coaching Arizona State’s men’s team in the late 90s after Bill Frieder resigned. He left the coaching ranks two years before brain cancer took him in 2018. The love of coaching lives on in his daughter.
“This is all I’ve ever known, and I was passionate about it from a young age,” Newman said. “And so, just growing up in the gym, being the water girl, being the ball kid, going on recruiting trips with my dad. I mean, he would leave me in the gym and say, ‘Hey, watch this kid while I go to watch this court.’ I don’t think guys understood that a 10-year-old kid was making decisions on their careers, but this is all I’ve ever known. And I love what I do, and I feel blessed every day that I get to come to work and do what I’m passionate about, but that’s really how I got my love for the game, and got my start, is because of my dad.”
Her dad isn’t the only basketball family for Newman. Arizona head coach Becky Burke is part of a family that was built at Louisville, where Newman got her start in the coaching ranks as a graduate assistant and assistant director of operations.
After four years with the Cardinals, Newman left to head West with former Louisville assistant Bethann Shapiro Ord. She spent the next 13 years coaching under Ord at Weber State and Binghamton.
“She was my family,” Newman said. “She was one of my biggest mentors. Her and I met at Louisville, built an incredible relationship, and then just building that loyalty…and that trust with her. So I was able to basically do anything…she just allowed me to spread my wings and get a lot of experience, like invaluable experience that I think a lot of assistants don’t get, but that was just because of the trust and the loyalty that we’ve built together, and her and her husband are my family until this day.”
Ord echoed that sentiment the day Newman’s new position as announced.
That desire for familial bonds brought Newman to Tucson. Her ties with Burke go back to Burke’s playing days under Jeff Walz.
“It feels like home, and that’s one thing that I’ve really been blessed with in my career, especially with Coach Ord, like being with family, and the fact that now I get to be with Coach Burke, it’s like being with family again,” Newman said.
It still didn’t happen immediately. Burke has been trying to get Newman to join her for a while. This was the right time and place.
“We’ve been going back and forth forever trying to get this thing together, and…when she finally called me, it was like, ‘Are you ready,’ and I was so juiced, ” Newman said. “As soon as I stepped foot here, and I started making my way over here, it’s just, it’s been like home, and it’s just been such a smooth transition. And I’m just super excited for the special things we’re going to do here.”
Burke and Newman share more than just their past at Louisville–or perhaps they share it because of their past with the Cardinals. Newman said her tactical philosophy is very similar to Burke’s. It’s about defense first. Even the day-to-day parts of running and training a team come from back then.
“I’ve tried to hire Devan like two or three times in my career,” Burke said. “It just kind of never worked out for us, but knowing somebody that is wired the same way that I am, and that has come from the same coaching tree that I have, is really, really important to me, because there’s literally…it’s just been such a smooth transition from the way that we do things in the office to…our sense of urgency about things, the things that we care about, the little things, is all from the Jeff Walz tree of coaches. And so I do things very similar to the way that he did them. So does she. There’s been no slippage in terms of like her not understanding what I want, how I want it done. I told her, you’re going to go out to the first practice and you’re going to know everything we’re doing before we even do it, because they’re the same things she’s been doing with her teams throughout her career.”
It also helps that Newman has ties out West. A considerable part of her coaching career was done in the Western part of the country and specifically in the Four Corners area. She spent years in Ogden, Utah coaching the Wildcats of Weber State.
“I had a good chunk of time out here, rebuilding the program with Coach Ord there for seven years,” Newman said. “So built a lot of great recruiting relationships out here, which I hope that’s one of the things that I’m going to bring to the table here for Arizona…those West Coast connections here, as far as recruiting.”
That’s not the most important thing for Burke or Newman. Loyalty comes first, and Burke feels she’s got that in this staff.
“It’s critical,” Burke said. “I mean, yes, she’s a great basketball mind, and yeah, all these things, but if you don’t have that loyalty and that alignment with your staff, you don’t have anything.”
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