College basketball world shows support for Georgetown coach Tasha Butts while she battles cancer

Rhiannon Walker
Georgia Tech players wear
Georgia Tech players wear "Tasha Tough" shirts to honor then-assistant coach Tasha Butts, who has breast cancer. (Photo by Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) (Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Last month, Tasha Butts stepped away from the Georgetown women's basketball team. The school said in an announcement Butts was going to “focus on her health in her ongoing battle against breast cancer.”

Since then, there's been a renewed wave of support from the college basketball community. Teams that Butts coached during her 16 years as an assistant have gone to social media to show their solidarity with the hashtag, #TashaTough.

The Hoyas hired Butts, 41, in April after she spent four years as Georgia Tech's associate head coach.

In November 2021, Butts was diagnosed with an advanced stage of breast cancer. At the time, she was an assistant with the Yellow Jackets, and a year later, she was forced to concede some of her responsibilities as she dealt with the disease.

It was during that time Georgia Tech began the "Tasha Tough" campaign, the proceeds contributed to the Kay Yow Cancer Fund, which assists the most vulnerable women fighting cancer.

“I’ve always fought,” Butts told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2022. “I’ve always had to fight for something. And that’s just the mentality that I wake up with every day now, is that my treatment is a part of my life. My medication is a part of my life now. My limitations may be a part of my life. But I’m going to deal with it. I’m going to fight through it. I can’t allow it to hold me back. That’s not who I am.”

Each program has offered its support more creatively than the last.

The timing of the disease has been one of the hardest parts for Butts. At her introductory news conference in April, she talked about relishing this opportunity and her desire to bring success to the Hoyas' program. She came with a wealth of experience, both as a player and a coach.

“I’m elated that I will have the opportunity to mentor, develop and coach these young women,” she said at the time in a statement. “ … I am super excited about this new journey, it’s going to be an amazing ride and we will do this together!”

As a guard for Tennessee, she played under the legendary Pat Summitt, and Butts helped lead the Lady Vols to three Final Fours and two national championship games in 2003 and 2004. The Minnesota Lynx drafted her in the second round of the 2004 WNBA Draft with the 20th overall pick.

Butts played her final professional season in 2006 and began her coaching career the following year. She returned to her alma mater as an assistant before serving on the coaching staffs at Duquesne, UCLA, LSU and Georgia Tech.

“Since her hiring in April, Tasha has proven to be a coach full of passion and drive,” Georgetown athletic director Lee Reed said in September. “As she battles this terrible disease, she continues to be an inspiration to our student-athletes, coaches and staff, and we will support her in this fight. Her community stretches from coast-to-coast, and I know that now, more than ever, we will band together to be Tasha Tough.”

In Butts' absence, associate head coach Darnell Haney will coach the team, Georgetown said.

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