COLUMN: Arizona Softball: 5 Names To Replace Mike Candrea

TUCSON, AZ — The coach with the most wins in NCAA softball history is retiring after spending 36 years in the Old Pueblo.

Arizona softball head coach Mike Candrea, who won 1,674 games and eight titles during that span, will officially announce as such at a media conference on Tuesday morning.

Candrea's successor will be handed the unenviable task of following a legend in the sport and continuing the Wildcats active streak of making 34 straight NCAA Tournament appearances.

Here's a list of five names that could step in and keep the Wildcats rolling along on the softball diamond:

• Taryne Mowatt-McKinney (Arizona assistant coach): Mowatt-McKinney would be the go-to hire from within the program. She's spent the last five seasons serving as an assistant coach under Candrea, after a stellar playing career in Tucson that included a Women's College World Series Most Valuable Player award in 2007. Mowatt-McKinney has overseen the Wildcats pitching staff since returning to Tucson, guiding Arizona to back-to-back WCWS appearances in 2019 and 2021 (the 2020 event was canceled).
• Linda Garza (Fresno State head coach): Garza is one of the top mid-major level coaches west of the Mississippi, guiding Fresno State to a Mountain West Conference title in 2021, after going 21-4 in 2020, prior to COVID-19 shutting down the season. Garza previously coached at UC-Riverside and Wright State and has no direct ties to the Wildcats' program, but clearly is a coach on the rise that is going to be coaching at a bigger program sooner, rather than later.
• Loren LaPorte (James Madison University head coach): LaPorte currently has the Dukes one win away from the WCWS championship series, becoming the first unseeded team to ever win its first two games in the event's history. She has posted a 344-86 record since becoming the head coach in Harrisonburg nine years ago, building JMU into a softball powerhouse. LaPorte, like Garza, would be an outside hire as she's never worked outside Virginia. That said, her continued success with the Dukes shows that she's ready to coach on the sport's biggest stage.
• Melyssa Lombardi (Oregon head coach): Lombardi just completed her second season in Eugene, leading the Ducks to a 37-15 record, finishing No. 10 in the last regular season USA Today poll. Lombardi is a Glendale native and played her first two years of college softball at Central Arizona College, so she'd be quite familiar with recruiting in the Grand Canyon State. She was the NFCA Division I Assistant Coach of the Year in 2017, and would be a solid steal from a fellow Pac-12 Conference rival.
• Gordon Eakin (Brigham Young University head coach): Eakin has served as the head coach at BYU since 2003, leading the Cougars to the NCAA Tournament every year since 2009 (except for the 2020 season, which was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Eakin has won 721 games in Provo and knows how to recruit on the West Coast. His winning ways could earn him a look, even though he's never coached in Arizona.