Kristin Iwanaga - Assistant Coach - Women's Basketball Coaches

Kristin Iwanaga

Title:
Assistant Coach

Follow Coach Iwanaga on Twitter: @kihoops

During her first six seasons on the staff at Cal Poly, Kristin Iwanaga has helped the Mustangs win three Big West championships while going 69-29 in conference play (a .704 winning percentage).

In addition to specializing with the team's perimeter player development, Iwanaga assists with the program's recruiting, scouting and camps.

A former point guard at Cal, Iwanaga coached both the co-Big West assist leaders in 2013-14, as Jonae Ervin and Ariana Elegado tied by averaging 4.5 each for the 38th-highest scoring team in the nation.

Coach Kristin Iwanaga

Ervin also led the league in assists as a junior, a year after leading the entire country in assist-to-turnover ratio (at 2.67). She finished her career as the school record-holder for assists (467).

Additionally, both Ervin (with 1,072) and Elegado (1,502) surpassed the thousand-point milestone in 2014.

Elegado, who a year later was one of 30 Senior CLASS Award candidates across the country, finished 2015 as the program's third-leading all-time scorer while again averaging the most assists throughout the Big West.

Elegado's career totals of 243 made 3s (the conference's fourth-most ever) and 466 assists each ranked among the Top 25 nationally for all Division I players, and her .828 free-throw percentage as a senior was her sixth school record whether on a single-game, season or career basis.

With Iwanaga on the bench, Cal Poly has made it to the conference tournament title game in three of four years. In 2013, the Mustangs defeated Pacific 63-49 to earn a trip to the NCAA Tournament for a first-round matchup with No. 3 seed Penn State at LSU.

Ball movement and outside shooting have been a key to the consistent success, as Iwanaga has helped direct an offense that has been No. 1 in the conference in 3-point accuracy every year but two since she arrived in San Luis Obispo (including the No. 2 percentage in the country her first season, 38.8 percent).

In 2012-13, the team's 15.9 assists per game ranked 22nd in the country, carrying on a recent staple of the program (Cal Poly's average of 18.3 in 2009-10 was fourth nationally).

Iwanaga still holds both the Pac-12 free-throw percentage records for a career (.890) and single season (.934 — via an 85-for-91 display in 2004-05, when she led the country in the category).

Also as a senior for the Golden Bears, she set the Pac-10 single-season record for 3-point shooting (.524) while earning all-conference second-team honors.

Iwanaga was a four-year starter in Berkeley, as well as a three-time Pac-10 All-Academic honoree. She departed the program ranked fourth in school history in 3-pointers made (122), seventh in games played (115) and ninth in assists (317).

She came to the Central Coast from St. Francis High School in Watsonville, where she served as the varsity basketball coach for the previous two seasons and as the assistant athletics director and chair of the Social Sciences Department.

During two seasons under Iwanaga, the Sharks compiled a 45-16 record, posted a pair of runner-up showings in the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League, won the 2009 SCCAL Tournament title and reached the semifinals of the 2008 Northern California Division V Championships. Prior to her tenure at St. Francis, Iwanaga also served as the head coach of the San Jose Cagers AAU White squad and was the assistant JV coach at her alma mater, Archbishop Mitty in San Jose.

Iwanaga graduated from Cal in 2005 with a degree in sociology. She also earned a master's degree in sports management from American University in 2009.