Penn State Hires Lady Lions Legend Angie Potthoff as Chief of Staff

Another Lady Lion legend is returning to Happy Valley.

Penn State on Friday afternoon announced the addition of alumna Angie Potthoff as the women’s basketball team’s new chief of staff, adding even more star-power to the front office. Entering her first season as head coach, Tanisha Wright has been assembling a staff of former standouts.

“I am overjoyed to have another Lady Lion come back home and work for Penn State women’s basketball,” Wright said in a press release. “Having the knowledge of what this program needs to succeed through her own experience will be more than beneficial working on our staff.”

Potthoff suited up for Penn State from 1992-97, earning three Associated Press All-American nods, with two honorable mentions and a third-team honor. She was named first-team All-Big Ten in three consecutive seasons and guided the Lady Lions to three NCAA tournaments and a pair of Sweet 16 runs. Potthoff still holds the program record for career shooting percentage at 57.4%. Her Penn State career overlapped with current director of advancement Susan Robinson Fruchtl (1988-1993), who was recently added to the staff.

She was drafted No. 12 overall in the 1997 American Basketball League Draft by the Columbus Quest, where she played one season before being selected No. 49 overall in the WNBA draft by the Minnesota Lynx the following summer.

After a three-year professional stint, Potthoff took a role as a graduate assistant at Indianan University of Pennsylvania for one season before joining Robert Morris as an assistant coach for the next three years. In 2005, she was hired as an assistant coach at Notre Dame. She spent five seasons as an athletic director at the high school level from 2014-19 before transitioning back to the Fighting Irish as director of operations, a role she held for the last seven seasons.