Katy Steding, BU’s new women’s basketball coach, is looking forward to “a happy marriage” of her coaching style and her players’ on-court style, she said in her public debut at BU in June. Steding comes from the University of California, Berkeley, where as an assistant women’s basketball coach she helped lead her team to two NCAA tournaments.

The women Terriers will “have to adjust to what we want to do, but I’ll actually have to adjust to what they can do and want to do and how they play,” Steding told reporters at the press conference. “If you try to morph players into something that they’re not familiar playing like, you’re going to have problems.”

Michael Lynch, then BU athletics director, introduced Steding, the seventh coach to lead BU’s women’s basketball team, as a woman whose “experience is second to none,” both as player and coach. Before her Berkeley job, Steding was head coach of women’s basketball for seven years at Oregon’s Warner Pacific College, where she oversaw the program’s transition from club level to varsity team. She left in 2008 for a season as assistant coach of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.

Steding was on the 1996 US Olympic gold medal–winning women’s basketball team, and has played professionally in the WNBA, with the Seattle Storm and Sacramento Monarchs, and with the American Basketball League’s Portland Power.

She said the coach’s position here was her dream job, because of the University’s rigorous academics, its membership in the Patriot League, and the appeal of living in Boston.

Steding replaces Kelly Greenberg, who resigned in April amid allegations from some players that she bullied them, leading four to quit in the last year. In her chat with reporters, Steding said she didn’t know if the controversy would linger with her players. “I don’t intend for it to linger. What I’ve said to everybody is, I think the most important thing is that this is our team, and we’re going to move forward. I think the girls are excited about the future, and that’s all I can ask for….They’re good players, so I don’t think it’s that far off to expect success.” The Terriers start the season at crosstown rival Northeastern on November 14.

A student-athlete at Stanford, Steding was a power forward and helped her team to its first NCAA Women’s Division I basketball championship in 1990. She graduated that year with a psychology degree. A native Oregonian, she was inducted into Stanford’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 2004.