SIU women’s basketball associate head coach Andrea Gorski will drop the associate tag from her title and go back to where her collegiate basketball career began all in one move.

Gorski will be named the head coach at her alma mater Bradley on Saturday, as first reported by Dave Reynolds of the Peoria Journal-Star.

Bradley hired Gorski after dismissing Mike Brooks last month. Brooks compiled a record of 37-84 in four years.

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She has served the last three seasons as associate head coach at SIU under head coach Cindy Stein.

“We’re very excited for this opportunity that she has to be the next head coach at Bradley,” Stein said in a statement Saturday. “Andrea has been instrumental in our program’s success and while we’re sad to see her go, we know how much this opportunity means to her.”

In her three-year span, Gorski helped Stein turn SIU around from going a 5-25 record to a 20-win team this season, earning a bid to the Women’s Basketball Invitational.

Gorski scored 980 points in her playing career and was named first team All-Missouri Valley Conference in the 1991-92 season. She was elected to the Bradley Hall of Fame in 1996.

It will be her first gig as a head coach at the NCAA level, but Gorski does have experience in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.

Before coming onto Stein’s staff, the former Brave was the head coach at Concordia University in Ann Arbor, Mich.

In her five years as head coach there she led another turnaround, taking a 8-22 team to a 23-11 season in Year Three and earning the school’s first ever NAIA Division II tournament appearance. The following two seasons, the team made it as far as the NAIA Division II Sweet 16 and had a No. 4 national ranking.

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Gorski has 17 years of head coaching experience between the high school, Amateur Athletic Union and college ranks.

“She’s the kind of coach that is always willing to put in any kind of extra work whenever,” junior guard Carlie Corrigan said. “We’re definitely going to miss her positive energy and enthusiasm she always brought to practice, but we’re really excited what she’s going to do at Bradley.”

No statement has been made if her daughter Kiley will transfer. She was an student assistant the previous two seasons after tearing her ACL her freshman year. The senior guard graduates in May with a degree in Biological Sciences.

 Ted Ward can be reached at [email protected] or 618-534-3303