With three consecutive Ivy League Championships and the school's first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance to her credit, head coach Jean Marie Burr, entering her 16th year with the program, has established a new standard of excellence and a winning tradition for Brown women's basketball.

Leading her team to the top of the Ivy League and into the next level of competitive Division I basketball, Coach Burr has compiled a 209-188 overall record with the Bears. She recorded her 200th career victory last season in a 66-41 win over Iona on Jan. 14. She is now the winningest coach in Brown basketball history (men's or women's).

Burr's passion for the game and skill as a teacher of fundamentals have enabled her to mold and shape her teams into winners. Despite inheriting a young squad with just two seniors in 1988-89, Burr was able to develop a winner in only her rookie season. Brown's 16-10 record was its best mark since winning back-to-back Ivy Championships in 1983-84 and 1984-85. Burr helped the team improve ten games in the win column from the previous season. The turnaround established Brown as one of the most improved teams in the country in 1988-89. For her efforts, she was named the Converse District I Coach of the Year.

In her first two seasons as head coach, Burr guided the Bears to identical records of 16-10 overall and 9-5 in the league. These numbers were good for third and second place finishes, respectively, in the Ivy standings. By the end of her third season, Brown posted a 19-7 overall mark while setting a new school record for wins in a season. The Bears were 10-4 in league play, again finishing just one notch shy of the coveted first place prize. The fourth season was doubly sweet, as Burr's squad shattered the school record for wins in a season with a 22-4 showing and captured the Ivy League title with an impressive 13-1 display in conference competition.

The Bears began the 1992-93 season as the preseason favorite for the first time in Burr's tenure. There was constant pressure to perform, as Brown became the team to beat in the Ancient Eight. Burr, an excellent motivator, prepared her team for this completely different mental challenge. As a result, the Bears brought home their second straight Ivy title after defeating Harvard in a hard-fought 87-81 overtime battle in Cambridge. Burr was honored by the Rhode Island sports media for her outstanding year by being selected as the 1993 Rhode Island Female Sports Coach of the Year.

Her team continued to rise to higher levels in the 1993-94 season, capturing a third consecutive Ivy championship, and winning a playoff game against co-champion Dartmouth to earn the Ivy League's first-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament. The Bears finished the regular season with an 18-9 overall record and an 11-3 Ivy mark. In Brown's first ever NCAA Tournament appearance, Burr's squad quieted a soldout crowd in Storrs, Conn., as the Bears took a 35-35 tie into the locker room at the half and held a second-half lead against the first-seeded Huskies. The final score, however, found eventual "Elite Eight" finisher UConn on top of the feisty competitors from Brown, 79-60. For her excellence in coaching, Burr was again voted the Rhode Island Female Sports Coach of the Year.

During the 1995-96 campaign, Burr guided her young squad to a 10-16 overall record, and a 7-7 league mark, as the Bears tackled one of their most competitive schedules to date. Five of Brown's opponents qualified for the NCAA tournament and one saw postseason action in the NIT. In the 1996-97 season, Burr guided a young team with no seniors to great heights as the underdog Bears took the Ivy League by surprise and finished with a 15-11 overall mark, and a 10-4 showing in the league, good for second place.

Last season, Burr led the Bears to one of the biggest turnarounds in Brown history. Brown climbed to a second place finish in the Ivy League standing with a 9-5 league mark and its 15 wins tripled its victory output from the previous season.

A 1977 graduate of the University of New Hampshire, Burr earned a degree in business administration. After graduation, she spent one year as an assistant coach at Davidson College and then played professional basketball for the New Jersey Gems of the Women's Basketball League.

In addition to her passion for coaching winning teams, Burr has served on the Board of Directors for the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) and is a member of the National Association of Basketball Coaches and the Women's Sports Foundation, and is a national lecturer and a great motivator, and she was recently honored with her selection into the University of New Hampshire Athletic Hall of Honor. Burr resides in Coventry, R.I., with her husband, Peter, and daughters, Judee Lee (13), Jessica Marie (11), Joanna Christine (9), and Jenna Rose (6).