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DALLAS — Liberty assistant coach Sonia Raman has always been a student of the game of basketball.

She grew up outside of Boston watching the Celtics in the 1980s when Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish ran the show. She also was an avid fan of ACC and Big East college ball and would watch games on TV at night, only to go to her high school coach the next day and pick his brain on what happened.

Raman went to Tufts University, where she walked onto the women’s basketball team. It was during her time there when she started to really started to consider the possibility of becoming a coach.

Raman’s first coaching job was as an assistant at her alma mater. She eventually would earn her first head coaching job with the women’s team at MIT, where she coached from 2008 to 2020 and captured the most wins in the team’s history.