NORTH TEXAS – Fresh from garnering the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 WNBA draft, the Dallas Wings now have a new leader.

Chris Koclanes, known as a defensive and player development master, has been named the Wings’ next head coach.

Currently an assistant coach at the University of Southern California, Koclanes is replacing Latricia Trammell, who was dismissed in October after compiling a 31-49 record over two seasons. The Wings finished 9-31 last season.  

Curt Miller, the Wings’ executive vice president and general manager, applauded Koclanes for his leadership, communication and basketball IQ.

“Throughout our extensive search and interview process, Chris continued to rise to the top and check the boxes of our important pillars,” Miller said in a news release. “He is a servant leader who places a high value on connection, collaboration, and a positive and consistent communication style with all those he coaches.

“Chris is a fantastic teacher of the game and has an outstanding basketball IQ. He is committed to player development and has a forward-thinking and innovative mind for the game. He is a tireless worker with a foundation built through preparation.

“In addition to his proven on-court skill, Chris possesses values that align perfectly with the Dallas Wings, including a shared focus on positively impacting the community and developing our players off the court.”

Miller touted the “many incredible things” on the Wings’ horizon, including a new arena, state-of-the-art practice facility and its selection of the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft.

“… We are confident Chris is the right person to lead this team into a new era of Dallas Wings basketball,” Miller said.

Koclanes has previous WNBA experience with the Los Angeles Sparks and the Connecticut Sun.

“I look forward to partnering with our ownership, front office, and players to create a sustainable championship culture that is felt on and off the floor, and in the community,” Koclanes said in the release. “I’m excited to support and empower the women of this league as we continue to elevate the WNBA to new heights.”

He kicked off his career in basketball operations and video coordination at William & Mary and St. Joseph’s.

A formal news conference announcing Koclanes is scheduled for Jan. 9 at Reunion Tower in Dallas.  

The Dallas Cowboys are back in the win column, and Jerry Jones couldn’t be happier.

Following his team’s nail-biting 26-24 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday Night Football, the Cowboys owner and GM was quick to praise his team.

But perhaps more importantly, he also went out of his way to mention had coach Mike McCarthy – who’s job security has been in question most of the season – and the job he has done this year.

MORE: 4 takeaways from Cowboys’ impressive win vs. Buccaneers

“I’m real proud,” Jones said after the game. “Mike McCarthy, he just won’t let them not think that they’re playing for the Super Bowl out there. He won’t let them do it. I’m proud of that. I’m proud of the coach… There’s no question that we’re fighting with a very limited deck out here right now, and those guys are doing a great job. All of them, the players, but my hat is off to Mike McCarthy.”

In Jones’ defense, the Cowboys have won four of their last five games after starting 3-7, and have an opportunity to finish the year above .500 if they can win their final two games.

The only problem? The Cowboys have also been officially eliminated from the playoff picture thanks to that abysmal start to the season.

This, of course, is not the first time that Jones has gone out of his way to say good things about his head coach either. Earlier this season, Jones told 105.3 The Fan that he gave McCarthy and defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer ‘high grades’ for the way they have navigated the team through adversity this season.

Jones has also consistently deflected any questions regarding the idea of moving on from the Cowboys coach, who is in the final year of his deal with the franchise. He even left the door open for a possible extension, despite McCarthy and the team’s struggles on the field throughout the year.

“I don’t think (an extension) is crazy at all,” Jones told The Fan in late November. “This is a Super Bowl-winning coach. Mike McCarthy has been there and done that. He has great ideas. We got a lot of football left.”

Will any of that matter when the season officially comes to a close in two weeks? Only time will tell, but it certainly seems as though Jones is doubling down on the idea of keeping McCarthy in Dallas.

And if the Cowboys can finish strong, and perhaps earn wins over the division-rival Eagles and Commanders, it would go a long way in helping Jones make that decision.

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Late Sunday night in the Dallas Cowboys locker room, as players reveled in a 26-24 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, head coach Mike McCarthy was making his way through a jovial scene when he spotted Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones near an entrance. Earlier in the day, the two had shared a conversation steeped in disappointment when they’d learned the Cowboys had been eliminated from the playoffs by a Washington Commanders win. But now, as McCarthy approached Jerry, the tenor of the day had changed.

Jerry smiled. And when McCarthy held out his hand for a shake, the owner instead opened his arms and drew his head coach into a hug. He then took a few moments speaking to McCarthy, one hand on the coach’s shoulder and another gently tapping him in the chest with a fist. As the dialogue subsided, Jones patted McCarthy on the shoulder a few times and pumped his fist. All of this, perhaps not by coincidence, unfolded in front of a “Sunday Night Football” camera that was televising the emotional exchange to whatever portion of the Cowboys’ audience that was still watching.

If you were going to gauge what’s going on with the Cowboys’ head coach and the franchise’s owner right now, this was a worthwhile snippet of video for two reasons: First, it’s clearly something that Jerry — still keenly aware of optics and the power of theater — wanted people to see. Whether it was a public display of pride or affection that McCarthy had earned or Jones just wanted to staple an image to his words that night, he knew where the moment would go. In a word, everywhere. And the second reason the moment matters? Jerry knows it’s coming in the midst of a time when the primary conversation about McCarthy is one of his job status, a situation Jerry created when he chose to make his head coach go into the final year of his contract with no discernible public mandate on how an extension could be achieved.

Let’s be honest about this joyous but complicated embrace as it moves forward: both of these men created it. Jerry by letting McCarthy play out this string of games with no clarity on what could be next for the Cowboys’ coaching staff. And McCarthy by arguably saving his best coaching for the portion of the season when there was nothing more to clinch other than the dignity of not quitting.

Make no mistake, that’s what we saw unfold last night. McCarthy showcased a locker room that is still galvanized despite having lost a postseason aim. They gutted it out with a massive spate of injuries on the offensive line and backup quarterback in Cooper Rush, not to mention wideout CeeDee Lamb, who played through a painful shoulder issue Sunday. Join that with a shorthanded defense that battered a good Buccaneers offense and literally ripped a win away in the final moments of Sunday night, when cornerback DaRon Bland pulled a fumble from the belly of Tampa running back Rashaad White. It was a moment that encapsulated a number of big-play stands on both sides of the ball, definitively halting a game-winning drive that seemed very achievable for quarterback Baker Mayfield.

The resounding feeling? The Cowboys’ playoff hopes are dead, but the attitude toward the remaining schedule is anything but buried. Instead, a narrative about culture is unfurling — about whether there is actually some kind of underlying strength Dallas can display in the final weeks of the season that say something about this team and coach. Maybe it’s enough to fulfill the hopes of the franchise cornerstones, including Lamb, quarterback Dak Prescott and edge rusher Micah Parsons, who have all (in some fashion) endorsed a McCarthy return in 2025. Surely, Jerry has heard that message, leaving him to look for reasons to keep McCarthy that goes beyond the three straight 12-win seasons that preceded 2024.

Afterward, Jerry was effusive in his praise of the effort in the win over the Buccaneers — making clear that it had stoked something emotional inside him.

“Those guys came out and played as though they were fighting in the championship game to go to the Super Bowl,” Jones said afterward. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of them and the coaching staff. It really shows me something.”

For his part, McCarthy tried to put a fine point on what that something was.

“I just think that [effort] shows you who they are,” McCarthy said. “I think everybody says the coach is always talking highly of the locker room — well, this is what I’m talking about. When I talk about, ‘It’s a great locker room,’ this is the definition of it. This is what a great locker room looks like. And it’s a mixture of men from all over the country, all over the world and different personalities. Obviously in circumstances [out of the playoffs] that we’ve discussed at length already. But when it came time to play, they played their asses off and I can’t tell you how proud I am.”

Of course, this peak of sorts — winning four of the last five games, getting to 7-8 with a chance at finishing the season at 9-8 — comes with measuring that goes beyond just a great locker room. There are fair questions to be asked about where this locker room culture was during a brutal five-game losing streak from mid-October to mid-November. It was an expanse that saw Dallas get obliterated in three of those games, against the Detroit Lions (a 47-9 loss), Philadelphia Eagles (34-6) and Houston Texans (34-10). And it wasn’t that long ago that Jerry was openly questioning some parts of the Dallas scheme, while also spiraling into sometimes odd postgame diatribes that lacked a cohesive connection to the here and now.

Those were the days of Bill Belichick possibly being the next Cowboys coach, and they weren’t that long ago. But times can also change quickly with Jerry. He rides Everest-ian highs after wins and Death Valley lows after losses. All of which typically result in McCarthy’s own roller coaster when it comes to his future employment.

Right now, the Cowboys are winning again — even if it’s too little and too late when it comes to the postseason. But as the victories have begun to stack onto the ledger and the support of vital players has ebbed into the public (and Jerry’s) consciousness, the disappointment has also started to soften where it matters. You hear it in Jerry’s words. You see it in the arms and embrace between an owner and head coach that seemed to be an intentional message to the fan base.

Things are changing. A 9-8 finish and the positive feedback of his players has Mike McCarthy pointed toward the one thing Jerry has avoided offering him thus far.

A contract extension.