Unrivaled Hires Pokey Chatman, Barb Turner and Jarell Christian for 3 Clubs That Went 14-28

Photo: Lorie Shaull via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pokey Chatman coaching the Indiana Fever against the Minnesota Lynx, September 2019.

Unrivaled set its Season 3 sidelines Wednesday morning: five head coaches back, three new ones in. Pokey Chatman takes Lunar Owls BC, Barb Turner takes Hive BC and Jarell Christian takes Breeze BC.

Unrivaled kept the coaches of its top four clubs and replaced three whose clubs went a combined 14-28 (by our count), including 2025 Coach of the Year Sackmann. Vinyl (5-9) kept its coach.

Who stayed, who left

Roneeka Hodges is back with Phantom BC after an 11-3 regular season, the top seed and a trip to the final. Zach O'Brien is back with Mist BC, the club that beat Hodges' Phantom 80-74 on March 4 for the 2026 title. Andrew Wade returns to Laces BC (10-4) and Nola Henry to Rose BC (6-8). Teresa Weatherspoon stays with Vinyl BC, which went 5-9 and finished sixth, below Breeze. Sed Everett runs the player pool again.

Out are Noelle Quinn (Breeze, 6-8), DJ Sackmann (Lunar Owls, 4-10) and Rena Wakama (Hive, 4-10). The league's release says half of its inaugural-season coaches now return for a third year, and it thanks Quinn, Sackmann and Wakama without saying why they are not back.

The Sackmann case

Sackmann was the 2025 Coach of the Year after the Lunar Owls went 13-1 in the inaugural season. In 2026 the club went 4-10 and missed the playoffs, tied with Hive for last. A regular season is 14 games.

Quinn's Breeze went 6-8 as an expansion club, then beat Rose, the 2025 champion, 69-50 in the first round to reach the semifinals.

The new hires

Chatman's WNBA mark is 134-172 over 306 games, with a 7-12 playoff record, per Basketball Reference. She took the Chicago Sky to the 2014 WNBA Finals after a 24-10 season in 2013. She also was head coach at LSU (2004-07), WBC Spartak (2008-10) and the Brazilian women's national team (2024-26), and was a Storm assistant and associate general manager from 2022 to 2025, per the league's release. Her Indiana Fever teams went 9-25, 6-28 and 13-21 from 2017 to 2019.

Turner comes in from the Washington Mystics bench, where she has been an assistant since 2025. Her earlier assistant jobs include the South Bay Lakers, the Capital City Go-Go, the Atlanta Dream and the Houston Rockets, per the league's release. She played 15 years in the WNBA and overseas after winning two national titles at UConn. Hive went 4-10 in its first season.

Christian was head coach of the Capital City Go-Go in 2018-19 and the first head coach of the Maine Celtics, then general manager in Maine from 2022 to 2025, when the club posted three straight 30-win seasons for the first time in its history. He was a Storm assistant in 2026. He takes over Breeze, the one club of the three that won a playoff game.

Season 3 opens Jan. 8 in Boston.

By our count: the 14-28 combined record adds the 2026 regular-season records of the clubs that changed coaches (Breeze 6-8, Lunar Owls 4-10, Hive 4-10). The clubs that kept theirs went Phantom 11-3, Mist 10-4, Laces 10-4, Rose 6-8 and Vinyl 5-9, per Unrivaled's standings.

Sources

• Unrivaled announces head coaches for league's third season, Unrivaled, Oct. 28, 2026: five returning coaches, three new hires, the three departures, club assignments and the new coaches' backgrounds.
• Unrivaled on X: Season 3 head coaches, Unrivaled, Oct. 28, 2026.
• 2026 Unrivaled standings, Unrivaled: regular-season records and finishing order for all eight clubs.
• Mist BC wins first Unrivaled championship, defeats Phantom BC 80-74, Unrivaled, March 4, 2026: final score and Phantom's 11-3 regular season.
• Vinyl, Breeze advance to Unrivaled semifinals after first-round wins, Associated Press via ESPN, Feb. 28, 2026: Breeze's 69-50 first-round win over Rose.
• Pokey Chatman coaching record, Basketball Reference: 134-172 WNBA record, 7-12 in the playoffs, season-by-season marks.
• Mystics finalize coaching staff, Washington Mystics, April 2, 2025: Turner's hire and coaching background.
• Seattle Storm finalizes 2026 coaching staff, Seattle Storm, Dec. 18, 2025: Christian's hire and G League record.