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The Basketball Podcast: EP 377 with Gayle Fulks on Hybrid Motion and Shooting-Focused Brand
In this week’s coaching conversation, Davidson head coach Gayle Fulks shares insights on hybrid motion and a shooting-focused brand.
Coming off one of the most successful campaigns in program history, Gayle Fulks is entering her ninth season at the helm of the Davidson College women’s basketball program.
Fulks has guided the Wildcats to 123 wins and two postseason appearances, including the 2025 WBIT. In addition to ranking second on Davidson’s all-time wins list, Fulks has coached 15 all-conference performers, while leading her club to a number of record-setting performances along the way.
Along with 18 conference games for the first time in A-10 play, the 2024-25 campaign yet again featured one of the nation’s toughest non-conference slates. The Wildcats rose to the challenge posting 19 victories, their most under Fulks, and a program-best 13 league wins en route to a third-place finish, their highest since joining the league in 2014.
Davidson’s 13 wins in Atlantic 10 play weren’t the only standard set last season. The Wildcats proved to be one of the most efficient and productive teams from the outside making a school-record 241 highlighted by eight games with at least 10 made 3-pointers. They also ranked among national leaders in 3-pointer differential (5th), 3-point defense (1st) and assists per game against (1st). In conference play, no team was better in blocks, points allowed, field-goal percentage defense and 3-point field goal percentage defense.
Before arriving at Davidson, Fulks gained valuable experience as an assistant coach at Wake Forest University, where she worked under Jen Hoover for five seasons, helping to shape the program and refine her coaching philosophy. Prior to her tenure at Wake Forest, she spent a season at UNC Greensboro, contributing to player development and game planning. Her coaching journey began at Longwood University, where she was on staff from 2007 to 2011.
Fulks’ basketball roots extend beyond the collegiate level. She started her career with the WNBA’s New York Liberty in 2007, serving as the Assistant Video Coordinator.
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Gayle Fulks Quotes:
“I was in the category of getting hired to build, to revamp, to try something different. And so, when I got here we really had to establish how we could be successful here? And over the last eight years through Covid and through the changes in the NCAA landscape with grad transfers . . we had to adjust, we had to adapt.”
“What’s a style of play we can recruit to every single year that people would choose Davidson for? With this guy named Steph Curry that I think everybody’s heard of, we should be able to recruit shooting . . But when I got the job at Davidson, they were actually the second worst three-point shooting team in the country. So, I said, ‘We really need to revamp this.’”
“[We have] this concept of share, shoot and stifle . . I thought to be successful at Davidson, we needed to recruit smart, skilled players that had a high level of physical toughness.”
“How do you generate open shots? Generating open shots means you can get two on the ball. You’re a really good player if you can get two people to guard you. Now, we need to be making the right choice. So, a lot of that is built into our system, and our saying for it is, ‘One-on-one, get it done. One-on-two, it’s not for you. And one-on-three, you’ve got to come sit with me.’”
“What we’ve found is that randomness is really challenging for teams. If we’re in this package where we’re staying in these three actions, we really want a lot of variability within those three actions. They all might look pretty similar . . but a coach from the sideline, when you’re doing it in real time, can’t necessarily tell you what’s about to happen.”
“We studied a few different things, and we decided to go to tagging up, which is an end of offense and start of a defense transition system. The clarity of everybody doing the same thing every single time was something that really resonated with our team, something we could really hold [players] accountable to, and that we could grade out.”
“Peel switching, a lot of it has to do with, if you are closest to the ball, you need to be ready to go. If you’re going to cross paths, you need to be kind of ready to go. And that decision needs to be not too late, so that now you have both there and now you’re giving up offensive rebounds, but not too early, so that the defense isn’t really beat.”
“When you ask a question, it’s always in your best interest to hear the whole answer and try to be disciplined in hearing them, because I think the more you hear, the better the response can be to help them . . I think the point of asking a question is not to be right or wrong, but to have a better understanding.”
“We have a list of things called the ‘can’t play ifs’ . . because it’s not fair to the other four people on the coin court to have to play with you if you’re not aligned with what we’re all doing.”
“We’re going to be pretty flexible defensively depending upon what someone’s doing within our base. We’ve really switched to prioritizing more defensive decision making versus defensive rules. What’s threatening right now? How can we just make them do one more thing? This situation is threatening. We have to provide more resistance here with other players or a different rotation or a trick trap or whatever that looks like.”
“Our players are graduating having had a good experience because we were honest in the recruiting process that this is a different place. We’re a niche school. It’s going to take a special type of player that’s going to be great at Davidson. But I do need you to be two feet in if you choose this place. And so, they had that belief in me. I kind of turned around and had that belief in them. There haven’t been any shortcuts. You know, it’s been that steady progress year after year of making players better, having more investment from our administration and our institution, and that’s allowed us to keep getting better and better players.”
Gayle Fulks Breakdown:
Gayle Fulks Selected Links from the Podcast:
Gayle Fulks
Bob McKillop
James Janssen
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