Veteran Saint Lucian basketball coach Daynia Benton is back on the bench as an assistant with the St. John’s University Red Storm, and she is expected to work closely with head coach Joe Tartamella, after building an extensive CV in college and the pros.
Born Daynia La Force, she was raised in Castries before moving to the USA, where she took up basketball. A four-year letterwinner for the Georgetown University women’s basketball team, she helped the Hoyas win the Big East in 1993 and advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16 in 1995.
By 2002, she was coaching at SJU as their first assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator. Over a three-year period, she helped take the programme to consecutive BIG EAST tournament berths and the 2005 National Invitational Tournament.
That previous stint with the Red Storm was preceded by Benton’s first coaching job, as a seven-year assistant at LIU. That experience led to her first stint as head coach, at New Haven where she led the Chargers to a 24-7 record, earning her Conference Coach of the Year recognition.
Since then, the Saint Lucian strategist has been head coach at Rhode Island from 2014-19, where she engineered the largest single-season turnaround in programme history, and spent eight seasons at the helm of Northeastern, 2006-14.
Her experience also extends to the professional ranks, having served as an advanced scout and volunteer coach with the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun in 2019, before joining the Atlanta Dream as an assistant coach in 2021.
In addition to coaching, Benton is executive director and CEO of the Terance Mann Complete Player Foundation (TMCPF.org) and is a co-founder of BentForce Basketball and Courtside Moms Media.
Benton is married to Eddie Benton, a women’s basketball associate head coach at Robert Morris University. Her eldest son, Terance Mann, is a guard for the Brooklyn Nets and recently began his eighth NBA season.
