Around this time last year, not long after the transfer portal opened, Western Kentucky women’s basketball coach Greg Collins started to feel a little unsettled.
Josie Gilvin, the Hilltoppers’ second-leading scorer and a potential future contender for Conference USA Player of the Year, had entered the portal on the first day of the window (and eventually landed at Kentucky). After her departure and some player graduations, Western Kentucky needed to rebuild the roster.
Coming off a 23-win season in 2024-25, Collins had several promising portal prospects interested in his program as he looked ahead to this season. But he kept running into the same hurdle when those targets asked about the financial piece of the puzzle and what Western Kentucky could offer from name, image and likeness and revenue share standpoints.
“That conversation kept coming up,” said Collins, who has worked in women’s college basketball for 24 seasons. “I wasn’t able to get it answered in a way where they still came to school here. That’s when the first red flag came up. I was like, ‘All right, this isn’t going the way it’s always gone in the past.’”
In a season Collins described as unlike anything he’s ever experienced before, the Hilltoppers went 8-21 — the worst record of his eight-year span as Western Kentucky’s head coach.
Collins and athletic director Todd Stewart are determined for things to go much differently next season. And they’ve already set the wheels in motion to make sure that’s the case.
In statements released over the weekend, Stewart announced that the program would be retaining Collins, who revealed he will be donating part of his own salary to the program’s NIL fund. A source familiar with the donations said he’s giving 10 percent of his salary. Donors — who made it clear they wanted Western Kentucky to retain Collins — have stepped up, too.
The early returns?
After working with just a $25,000 NIL budget this season, the Hilltoppers said they will be well over $100,000 for next season, and they expect more money to roll in during the fall as fundraising efforts continue.
“We started doing a thorough analysis of the program and really what became obvious was we just didn’t have the NIL resources that you need today in women’s basketball to compete,” Stewart said. “And that had not really impacted, at least our program, until this current year.
“But players that we would’ve had in the pre-NIL era, we weren’t getting. And the reason was they were simply going elsewhere for money.”
Collins said he ran the idea of donating part of his own salary to the program’s NIL fund by his wife, Rae. He and Stewart met about two-and-a-half weeks ago, when they collectively decided on the idea for Collins to chip in, which in turn has already sparked other donors to follow suit.
“We’ve got to do what the other schools are doing and we’ve got to be able to compete for the players that we want through NIL,” Collins said. “And so I think if we’re asking other donors to donate their money — and they have kids and bills and retirement plans and things, too — if they’re doing that, then … it felt like a good thing to do would be to also do that and show them that we’re all in this. We’re all trying to achieve a similar goal. It’ll take a commitment from everyone.”
Collins has finished with a winning record in five of his eight seasons at the helm and is known in basketball circles for his ability to develop under-the-radar players. He has coached double-digit all-conference players (including six on the first-team) and has had two Freshman of the Year winners, despite coaching only one former high school All-American. When Stewart was looking for a new coach, former players encouraged him to make the obvious decision and hire Collins, who had been a top assistant on staff.
Before NIL came into the picture, Collins could rely on relationship-building and developing underrecruited talent to build his rosters. Part of the reason donors were so passionate about keeping him on board for next season, Stewart said, was because of the way Collins carries himself.
But it’s a new era in college sports, where money rules the roost. That’s why the program has made a quick plan to beef up the Hilltoppers’ NIL packages.
“Nobody would sit here and try to rationalize 8-21. But I think our donors saw beyond that and looked at the reasoning and probably more important than the reasoning, the solution,” Stewart said.
“(They) just felt like it wouldn’t be fair to make a change based on this year when he was fighting with one hand tied behind his back so to speak. Let’s give him the resources, and even try to exceed those resources that other people have and see what he can do with that. … We were very thankful that was the way they felt.”
Collins, after not qualifying for the NCAA Tournament, now has a longer offseason to get a jump start on evaluating talent. He said he now feels indebted to fans, supporters and the community “in a whole different way.”
With the beefed up resources, he’s actually looking forward to the transfer portal this year — a far cry from how he felt just 12 months ago.
Now it’ll be his job to turn those funds into wins.
“I’ve had a lot of people that have said, ‘Hey, how can I help you?’ and that didn’t happen this time last year,” Collins said.
“If that’s what it takes for everybody to chip in, then great. Let’s do this thing, get back to where we want to be.”
