Jefferson University’s Tom Shirley becomes the 25th college basketball coach to reach 900 wins

When Jefferson women’s basketball head coach Tom Shirley got his first coaching job at Division III Allentown College in 1981, his only coaching experience was with a team of 10- to 12-year-old boys in a Plymouth Meeting youth basketball league.

Shirley left his job with the Ford Motor Company to serve as athletic director at Allentown College, and the school didn’t have a women’s basketball coach.

“Nobody was coaching the women’s team, so I said, ‘I’ll do it,’” Shirley said.

Shirley, now in his 43rd season coaching women’s basketball, became the 25th college basketball coach, men’s or women’s, to amass 900 wins across any level of competition with Jefferson’s 58-33 victory over Caldwell on Wednesday night.

Shirley, 70, left Allentown, which is now named DeSales University, for Philadelphia Textile in 1989. He served as athletic director and women’s basketball head coach at Textile through its name change to Philadelphia University in 1999 and its merger with Jefferson in 2017.

This season is Shirley’s first as a full-time basketball coach, afterhe stepped down from his longtime administrative post at the start of the 2024-25 academic year.

“It’s allowed me to generate some extra time,” Shirley said. “What I find myself doing more of is watching more film and going to more open gyms where you see kids play, and then going to more high school games.”

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Shirley leaving his job at Ford to take an athletic administration job was rooted in the Roxborough native’s hesitancy to leave Southeastern Pennsylvania.

“I realized, to elevate myself in that company, I would have to move four or five or six times,” Shirley said. “I’m from the neighborhood, and I just wasn’t leaving the neighborhood.”

Even his decision to depart his alma mater, Allentown, for Division II Textile was about returning to Philadelphia.

“The next move for me was, ‘Let’s get to Philadelphia, and let’s play with scholarships,’” Shirley said.

Shirley expected to depart for the Division I ranks some day. But as his teams found success, Shirley discovered he didn’t want to leave. Now, in his 35th season with the Rams, he’s got a self-described “good gig.”

“I pretty much can control my own schedule,” Shirley said. “Like everybody else, I have a boss. But, I can come in when I want. I leave when I want. I can wear what I want. … Why would I go somewhere else and take a chance of the unknown, when pretty much everything I want, especially my family, my parents at the time, [was] here?”

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Coaching D-II basketball has allowed Shirley to evade many of the changes within higher-profile collegiate athletics, including recent introductions of name, image, and likeness policies and the transfer portal. He does not recruit through the portal and instead focuses on high school players. Shirley has no regrets.

“This was a good thing,” Shirley said. “I would do it over again if I could.”

Of the 11 coaches to win 900 women’s college basketball games, only three are actively coaching. The two coaches other than Shirley are Geno Auriemma, a Norristown native who has 1,238 wins and counting over 40 seasons at Connecticut, and Andy Yosinoff, who is in his 48th season at D-III Emmanuel College in Boston.

Longevity is a prerequisite for joining the 900-win club, but an inevitable question of retirement arises once that mile marker is reached.

“I’m happy to reach 900, but it also means the end is closer than the beginning,” Shirley said. “That’s for sure.”

Shirley’s plan is to reevaluate his retirement plans at 75. A similar assessment helped him come to the conclusion that he needed to step away from his job as athletic director when he turned 70.

“I’m not ready to just sit around and watch Gunsmoke all day,” Shirley said. “I need something to do.”

Shirley prides himself on consistency, and another five seasons would give him around 150 games to reach 1,000 career wins. Over the past 10 seasons, Shirley had fewer than 20 wins in a season once, in 2016-17.

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“If I coached for 45 years and I had 900 wins, that’s 20 wins a year,” Shirley said. “That’s consistent. I think the fact that we got 900 wins in, and I say we, in 43 years, we’re winning about 21 games a year, on average. That’s special to me.”

More importantly, five more seasons is more time for Shirley to do a job he describes as a “get-to job.”

“Hopefully, I’ve been able to impact some lives and help some young people get on the right path or stay on the right path,” Shirley said. “That’s what really matters. That’s one of the reasons I stayed at [Jefferson] so long, because I like it there. It’s a really good place. The people we attracted are good people. The people I work with are good people.”

Shirley credits those people, players, assistant coaches, scorekeepers, athletic administrators, and his wife and family with supporting his ambitions over 43 seasons.

“You put all that together, and, collectively, we have 900 wins,” Shirley said.