Jennifer Dawn Boucek ( ; born December 20, 1973) is an American basketball coach and a former player. Boucek played college basketball for the University of Virginia and later professionally for the Cleveland Rockers in the WNBA and KeflavÃÂk in Iceland where she won both the national championship and the national cup, as well as being named the Foreign Player of the Year.
Boucek started her coaching career in 1999 as an assistant with the Washington Mystics. She later served as an assistant for the Miami Sol and the Seattle Storm before being named the head coach of the Sacramento Monarchs in 2007. After serving as an assistant coach for the Storm again, she became the head coach of the team in 2015. In 2018 she became the third woman to serve as an assistant coach in the NBA when she was hired by the Sacramento Kings. She later served as an assistant for the Dallas Mavericks and has been an assistant coach for the Indiana Pacers since 2021.
Boucek was a two-time GTE Academic All-American team member and two-time ACC selection. Boucek twice earned team Defensive Player of the Year honors and finished her career at Virginia as a member of the 1,000-point club. She also competed in the U.S. Olympic Festival in 1993.
Boucek graduated with honors in 1997 with a double major degree in sports medicine and sports management. She was given a free fifth year after her college playing career ended. She had six mini-internships during that year, including in sports medicine, sports information and sports psychology. Boucek graduated as No. 1 at Virginia's Curry School of Education and Human Development.
Boucek planned to enter med school but rumors of the WNBA's founding had her spending a month getting back into shape to attend a Cleveland Rockers open tryout. In 1997, she was one of a pair of women to earn a spot on the roster from 350 attendees to the tryout. Boucek played her first game with the Rockers on June 21, 1997, in a 56 - 76 loss to the Houston Comets, where she recorded 2 points and 2 rebounds. She would play in 10 of the Rockers' 28 games in the 1997 season, missing several games due to a stress fracture in her back. With her final game being on August 23, 1997 when the Rockers defeated the New York Liberty 72 - 71.
In November 1997, Boucek signed with KeflavÃÂk in the Icelandic top-tier 1. deild kvenna (now named ÃÂrvalsdeild kvenna). She appeared in 18 league, playoffs and national cup games, with KeflavÃÂk winning 16 of those. KeflavÃÂk went on to win the national championship and the national cup with Boucek being named the Foreign Player of the Year after averaging 20.7 points, 5.9 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game.
She returned to the Cleveland Rockers in time for the 1998 season but was released prior to the start of the regular season on her own accord due to a torn hamstring.
|- | style="text-align:left;" | 1992âÂÂ93 | style="text-align:left;" | Virginia |32||-||-||54.2||0.0||70.6||3.8||1.9||0.7||0.1||-||5.9 |- | style="text-align:left;" | 1993âÂÂ94 | style="text-align:left;" | Virginia |30||-||-||41.5||24.0||67.2||4.6||4.2||1.4||0.2||-||8.5 |- | style="text-align:left;" | 1994âÂÂ95 | style="text-align:left;" | Virginia |32||-||-||51.6||30.6||67.5||3.8||3.8||1.4||0.1||-||9.9 |- | style="text-align:left;" | 1995âÂÂ96 | style="text-align:left;" | Virginia |33||-||-||51.7||0.0||58.2||2.7||2.7||1.3||0.0||-||7.4 |- | style="text-align:center;" colspan=2 | Career |127||-||-||49.3||27.0||65.7||3.7||3.1||1.2||0.1||-||7.9 |- class="sortbottom" |style="text-align:center;" colspan="14"|Statistics retrieved from Sports-Reference.
|- | align="left" | 1997 | align="left" | Cleveland |10||1||11.2||46.7||0.0||57.1||1.0||0.9||0.6||0.0||2.2||1.8 |- | align="left" | Career | align="left" | 1 year, 1 team |10||1||11.2||46.7||0.0||57.1||1.0||0.9||0.6||0.0||2.2||1.8