BELTON — Mary Hardin-Baylor has parted ways with head women’s basketball coach Katie Novak-Lenoir after three seasons, True To The Cru has learned. A UMHB spokesperson confirmed the coaching change on Friday morning.
Novak-Lenoir went 46-34 in her three-year tenure in Belton, leading The Cru to the 2024 NCAA Tournament and a pair of Top 2 finishes in American Southwest Conference play.
Formerly the head coach at Division III Sul Ross State and Division II Hawaii Pacific, Novak-Lenoir took the reins of the UMHB program in April 2023 with six years of head coaching experience in addition to three seasons as an assistant during Our Lady of the Lake’s run as an NAIA powerhouse.
She remains the winningest coach in SRSU history, having taken the Lobos to their first-ever ASC Tournament win in 2021 while being named ASC West Division Coach of the Year. She then led HPU to a 14-14 overall mark in her lone season in Honolulu in 2022-23, doubling HPU’s PacWest Conference win total from the previous year.
In Year 1 with The Cru, she carried over that success from previous stops, as UMHB got out to a 16-1 start with notable victories over Willamette and Millsaps, both programs that went on to win their respective conferences and reach the NCAA Tournament. The early victories gave UMHB its first entrance into the D3hoops.com Top 25 in Week 4, where the Crusaders spent seven straight weeks as a nationally-ranked team, ascending to as high as No. 14 in the country. That same stretch saw UMHB knock off No. 14 Hardin-Simmons—a future Sweet 16 team—in overtime in Abilene.
The Cru went on to finish as ASC Tournament runners-up and reached the NCAA Tournament, falling in a narrow loss to Trinity in the opening round.
The 2024-25 campaign featured another milestone as UMHB took down No. 2 Wartburg less than nine months after the Knights’ Final Four appearance. The 67-64 come-from-behind win in Belton marked the highest-ranked win in program history, and was soon followed by a road win over 18th-ranked Hardin-Simmons on Feb. 1. The Cru won three of its final four games down the stretch of the regular season and nearly played its way into the NCAA Tournament with an at-large bid, finishing as the first team left out of the field in the new NCAA Power Index, which had been implemented prior to the start of the 2024-25 athletic year.
This past winter saw UMHB endure a more difficult season, going 8-18 overall. The Cru still made history, however, hitting 14 consecutive 3-pointers in an emphatic 90-65 win over Howard Payne, setting a new NCAA record across all divisions for consecutive 3s. UMHB also beat ETBU in Belton for the first time since December 2023.
In her nine seasons spent as a head coach between the D2 and D3 levels, Novak-Lenoir has recruited 2022 WBCA All-American Vania Hampton (SRSU), 2024 ASC Scholar-Athlete of the Year Marley Rokas (SRSU), D2 All-American and 2023 PacWest Player of the Year Abby Spurgin (HPU), and 2025 ASC Newcomer of the Year and 2026 ASC Defensive Player of the Year Rachel Okoye (UMHB), displaying her capability in finding underrated talent. That was present over her three years at UMHB with Okoye and others, including in 2025-26, as freshman guard Natalia Galvan from 2A Mumford High School finished the season as one of the top freshman shooters in the ASC, going 41.3% from 3-point range.
With the coaching change, the UMHB program will have a new leader for the seventh time in its Division III era. Novak-Lenoir leaves Belton with 102 career wins in her nine-year career as a collegiate head coach.
What a mistake Coach Novak was the best coach.
Coach made every one of her players better basketball players but more important they became better women. Coach made my daughter the person she is today and i will always be grateful.
Why did they get rid of her? Did all the players feel the same way as your daughter?