Tyler Marsh Isn’t Going Anywhere. Here’s Why.

“Tyler Marsh will be the head coach of the Chicago Sky next year.”

That was the first answer Chicago Sky general manager Jeff Pagliocca gave when his exit interview opened. It was also the question everyone had been waiting to ask.

When the follow-up came, whether Marsh would enter 2027 on the hot seat, Pagliocca didn’t hesitate.

“Tyler’s not on the hot seat in 2027,” he said. “Full support in Tyler leading my team.”

For a franchise that finished 16-28 and missed the playoffs again, the decision will raise eyebrows. But inside the Sky locker room, the verdict on Marsh came in long before Pagliocca sat down for his exit interview.

Marsh took over a franchise in transition. The Sky fired Teresa Weatherspoon in September 2024 after one season and a 13-27 finish and hired Marsh that November. He came from the Las Vegas Aces, where he was an assistant on the staff that won back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023. Chicago was his first head coaching job at any level.

His first year was rough: 10-34, tied for the worst record in the league. His second brought a rebuilt roster and a 3-1 start on the road, and then the injuries hit. Rickea Jackson went down early. Courtney Vandersloot, DiJonai Carrington and Azurá Stevens all started the season working back from injury. By July, the Sky had lost more games to injury than any team in the league, and the close games kept slipping away.

“We played 25 clutch games, third-most in the league, and lost 16 of them,” Pagliocca said. “We simply have to be better in those situations.”

That puts Marsh at 26-62 over two seasons, and Sky fans have every reason to be frustrated. The franchise has missed the playoffs three straight years, cycled through coaches and overhauled its roster more than once. When asked what he would say to those fans, Pagliocca didn’t dodge it.

“The fans deserve a winning team,” he said. “I want them to be excited about the type and amount of work we’re going to keep putting in to get this thing back on track for good.”

He also put the weight of the season on himself.

“They can’t put any more pressure on me than I’m putting on myself,” Pagliocca said.

The fans kept showing up anyway. Vandersloot pointed to the home finale, played after the Sky had already been eliminated.

“Our last game here was absolutely incredible,” she said. “It didn’t mean anything at that point, but the crowd and the fans showed up and they supported us.”

So why stay with Marsh? For Pagliocca, it starts with fairness.

“I think it would have been incredibly unfair to judge a young coach who has yet to have a healthy roster,” he said. “I’ve seen enough growth there.”

He also credited Marsh with landing the players who signed last offseason.

“Although I’m a big part of those conversations, players come here to play for the coach, not for me,” Pagliocca said.

Most of all, he pointed to how Marsh handled losing.

“I never heard him make excuses. I never heard him shy away from taking responsibility,” Pagliocca said. “He kept the locker room intact, and you all know what happens when you start losing. It takes people to dangerous and irrational places at times.”

That locker room told the same story. Almost every player was asked about Marsh in exit interviews, and their answers sounded alike.

“He found positives in everything that we were doing,” Vandersloot said. “It’s not easy to always find the positives when you’re losing… It was really always a positive environment.”

Carrington, who missed most of the season, saw it from the sideline.

“It’s definitely hard going through a lot of different things to make sure that the players’ minds are still focused on the right things and on winning,” she said. “He did do a good job of that.”

Elizabeth Williams said Marsh’s experience in winning locker rooms showed.

“He’s very collaborative in how he operates, whether it’s with his staff or with us,” Williams said. “I thought he did a good job of keeping us encouraged despite injuries and things out of our control, reminding us to control what we can.”

For Rachel Banham, in her 10th season, it came down to how Marsh treats people.

“He’s such a relationship guy,” Banham said. “It’s nice when you play for a coach you genuinely feel cares about you and loves you, and wants to know you as more than just a player.”

That connection made Chicago feel right for Kate Martin with two weeks left in the season.

“I love Ty,” Martin said. “I’ve gotten to be around him for a couple years now, so being reunited with him has been a blessing.”

For Sydney Taylor, Marsh’s confidence is the story of her rookie season. The undrafted guard became one of the team’s go-to scorers, and she said Marsh never wavered, even on her worst nights.

“There were games where I went 0-for-10 and I’d tell him, ‘Sub me out. I’m hurting the team,'” Taylor said. “And he’d still keep me in and still tell me to shoot.”

Natasha Cloud felt that confidence too, when injuries pushed her into a bigger scoring role.

“There were games where Ty would come to me and say, ‘I need you to score tonight,'” Cloud said. “And I’d say, ‘I got you.'”

Cloud didn’t sugarcoat what Marsh inherited. She said he took over the organization at a time when it “desperately needed something new” and a rebuild, and she asked people to keep that in mind before judging him.

“I don’t feel like you can ever just critique Tyler,” Cloud said. “I think you have to critique our whole team. I think you have to critique our whole organization.”

Not every relationship was easy. Skylar Diggins, who played 19 games before a knee injury ended her season, was moved to the bench in early July and didn’t play again. She said that move was never discussed with her ahead of time, and that she wished she’d had more time with her coach.

“I haven’t spent as much time as I wanted to as a player under him to properly speak on his development as a coach,” Diggins said. “Does he love basketball? Yes, we know that… Seeing how locked in he is with the team game by game, that’s promising.”

Pagliocca said Diggins and Marsh have talked through what happened, during the season and as recently as last week.

“She’s a highly competitive player, and we have a highly competitive coach,” he said. “I have no reason not to feel like Skylar’s bought in.”

Vandersloot and Cloud both talked about extending grace to Marsh as a second-year coach. Asked what a season like this taught him about leading, Marsh pointed to one word.

“There’s so much power in consistency,” Marsh said. “As a coach, you have to understand you’re not going to make every right decision, but what you can do is not have the players guessing what type of coach they’re getting every day.”

He isn’t running from his own growth either. Marsh said he studies Indiana’s Rick Carlisle on late-game situations, a direct answer to the close losses that defined this season.

“I’m entering my third year as a head coach, so there’s no ceiling on what I’m trying to improve,” he said. “There’ll be a lot of self-improvement during that time, just like we ask of our players.”

He isn’t treating Chicago as a stop along the way. Marsh said he told Pagliocca and ownership from his first day that he wanted to live in the city year-round, so he can be hands-on with players once the new practice facility opens.

“From day one of getting the job, I made it clear to Jeff and to ownership that I wanted to put roots down here,” he said.

That commitment shapes how he sees year three.

“It’s a continued commitment to establishing, setting and reinforcing the standards we want this organization to be about,” Marsh said. “You want it to be sustainable. You want it to come from the top, from ownership on down.”

The pieces are there: a healthy Rickea Jackson, whom Pagliocca called a future top-10 player; Taylor, whom he called “a cornerstone of who we are”; a young core of Kamilla Cardoso, Gabriela Jaquez and Jacy Sheldon; two first-round picks; and a and a practice facility set to open this offseason.

Grace has been extended. Year three is when it gets measured.

Cloud said it best.

“Every time I stepped on that court, I’m fighting for Tyler,” she said. “If you’re going to blame Tyler, you can blame me just as much.”