Azusa Pacific University Athletics

Azusa Pacific's all-time winningest coach and the dean of the PacWest Conference, TJ Hardeman, the missionary's kid from the Philippines with the laid-back yet powerful leadership style, is in his 18th season at APU, eyeing an unprecedented fourth straight PacWest crown and an eighth straight NCAA Tourmament bid.

His consistency in winning, this long into his career, really doesn't come as a surprise.  He took over a very competitive Cougar program back in the summer of 2007, and in short order elevated the Cougars to another level.  In just his third season in the Canyon City he took APU to the NAIA national championship game, a 73-65 setback to Union University (Tenn.).  A year later, Hardeman and the Cougars got their revenge and more, downing Union, 65-59, in the NAIA title contest to capture the program's first-ever national championship and cap an impressive 33-5 season.

From there, the winning just kept rolling in for Azusa Pacific.  In 17 seasons at the Cougar helm, Hardeman has reached the 20-win plateau 13 times, including the aforementioned 33-win national championship season of 2011.  He enters the 2023-24 season with a 407-121 (.771) record at APU.  In conference play, to put it simply, his Cougars have been dominating.  Hardeman is 194-38 (.836) in PacWest play, which includes 7 conference championships, including 6 of the past 7 years.  Over the past 3 seasons, Hardeman's Cougars have fashioned a 55-4 (.932) record in PacWest play, and they open the 2024-25 season with a 23-game conference winning streak, having posted last year only the fourth perfect conference slate in PacWest history at 20-0.

Hardeman led the Cougars to back-to-back-to-back PacWest regular season and tournament championships in 2022, 2023, and 2024, and the program made its sixth, seventh, and eighth NCAA Tournament appearances, advancing to the West Region semifinals all 3 times. In 2021-22, the Cougars finished the season with a 25-4 overall record, which is the third-fewest number of losses by a team in Azusa Pacific's 54-year history of women's basketball.

In the COVID-abbreviated 2020-21 season, Hardeman and his team dealt with adversity, as injuries prevented the team from having their planned starting lineup at any point during the regular season.  Nevertheless, the team compiled a 12-5 record, defeating Point Loma on the final day of the regular season to earn a spot in the NCAA West Region tournament for the fourth consecutive season, then winning a pair of games in Colorado against higher seeds to win the West Region Championship for the second time in three years, advancing once again to the Elite Eight. The Cougars were also Southern California Pod Champions, as the PacWest conference instituted a 'pod'-scheduling format due to the global pandemic. The Southern California Pod consisted of the Cougars, Biola, Concordia and Point Loma.

During the 2019-20 season, Hardeman guided the Cougars' to their fourth trip to the NCAA Division II Women's Basketball National Tournament. Azusa Pacific was the fifth-seed in the West region after going 25-5 in the regular season, including an 18-4 PacWest record. Unfortunately, the Cougars were never able to take the court in the tournament, as the global COVID-19 pandemic forced the NCAA to cancel the postseason prior to the first round,

Hardeman took the Cougars to their first-ever NCAA Elite Eight in 2019 season. The Cougars won the PacWest regular season title after finishing with a 21-1 conference record. In the NCAA tournament, the Cougars upset undefeated and top seed UC San Diego, 64-61 in La Jolla, in the West Region semifinals, and then on a desperation last-second 3-point buzzer-beater, upset Alaska-Anchorage, 65-63, the following night for their first-ever regional crown. 

Though the Cougars were selected for the 2020 NCAA Tournament, the COVID-pandmic canceled the tournament after APU had arrived on site in Honolulu.  The next year, the 2021 campaign, was abbreviated because of the pandemic, and though the Cougars struggled to find their way early on, they rallied late in the season, winning 8 of their final 9 games, which included a stunning 78-76 win at Point Loma in which APU rallied from 15 down in the second half to keep their slim hopes alive for an NCAA Tournament bid.  The following day the Cougars knocked off Point Loma at home and secured another NCAA Tournament.  A week later, in Grand Junction, Colo., APU upset No. 1 seed Hawaii Pacificin the West Region, which had not lost to a PacWest team in 41 games, 72-59.  APU went on to knock off Westminster (Utah), 53-48, to move on to the Elite 8 for the second time.

Prior to his arrival, Azusa Pacific had won just 3 games in nine NAIA Tournament appearances, but, under Hardeman, the Cougars posted 12 national-tournament victories including the run to the 2011 title. He extended Azusa Pacific's streak of NAIA Tournament appearances and consecutive 20-win seasons to nine straight years, and his 2011 squad claimed the program's sixth Golden State Athletic Conference championship - its second in a row.

During the 2013-14 season he coached his niece Kelly Hardeman to the PacWest Freshman of the Year award. In their first full season as NCAA Division II members during the 2014-15 season, he led the Cougars to wins over nationally ranked Cal Poly Pomona and Western Washington.

The program success continued in 2015-16 when they started the season un-ranked in the national polls but rose into a Top 20 program throughout the campaign. The Cougars won the PacWest regular season and tournament titles en route to earning the No. 1 seed for the NCAA West Region Championship. During that season, Kelly Hardeman was named the conference's and region's Player of the Year.

Two seasons later TJ Hardeman guided the squad to the PacWest regular season title with an 18-2 mark in league games. There 27-win regular season was good enough to secure the No. 1 seed for the West Regional Championships for the second time in 4 seasons.

In 2012-13 Hardeman put a young squad in position to win the Pacific West Conference title in the program's first season of PacWest play up until the final week of the regular season, which culminated with an upset of nationally ranked Grand Canyon to end the Antelopes' bid at the league championship. One season earlier Hardeman took his national championship team to the quarterfinals of the NAIA tournament, before Azusa Pacific fell to eventual champion Oklahoma City. The 2010-11 33-5 campaign produced the highest win total and winning percentage in program history. The Cougars posted five straight wins to clinch their title-game berth at the NAIA Tournament, where Azusa Pacific had never before won back-to-back games prior to 2010. In 2010 without any seniors, the Cougars fashioned an 18-2 GSAC record, winning 14 of the final 15 and winning all 10 conference home games to share the regular-season GSAC crown with Vanguard.

Hardeman's 2007 arrival to Azusa Pacific led the program to an unprecedented level of success. In 2008, the Cougars matched their highest single-season win total (24) since 2002, steering Azusa Pacific to its highest national tournament seed (No. 3) since the NAIA began using the bracketed-quarters format in the women's national tournament. A year later, Hardeman became just the third coach in program history to lead Azusa Pacific to an NAIA Tournament victory when a Cougar squad with no seniors (and just 1 junior) posted a 65-55 first-round win over Southern Nazarene (Okla.).

Hardeman, the seventh coach in Azusa Pacific's 54-year history of women's basketball, took over the Cougar program after spending the previous 3 ree seasons as the women's head coach at Golden State Athletic Conference (GSAC) rival Hope International University in Fullerton, Calif., where he put together one of the most remarkable turnarounds in conference history.

Hardeman inherited a Hope International program that finished last in the GSAC 5 straight seasons and had won just five of 96 conference games from 1999 to 2004. However, he led the Royals out of the cellar, fashioning a 38-58 (.396) 3-year record. He guided the Royals to 16 GSAC victories the final two seasons, 10 more than the program had collected in its six previous seasons in the conference.

In 2006, he caught everyone's attention in the GSAC when Hope International posted its first-ever 20-win season and qualified for its first-ever NAIA postseason action. His Royals carved out a 20-14 overall record, which included a 10-10 slate in GSAC play and a sixth-place finish. For his effort, Hardeman was named the GSAC Coach of the Year, the first HIU coach ever to be so honored in any sport.

Prior to taking over the Hope International program, Hardeman spent 20 seasons as a boy's head coach on the high school level in Southern California, serving seven (1982-89) years at Paramount (Calif.) High before moving on to Troy High in Fullerton, Calif., where he coached for 13 (1990-2003) more campaigns. While at Troy, he led the Warriors to the CIF playoffs 11 times and was named the Freeway League Coach of the Year four times as well.

Hardeman, who grew up in Philippines as the oldest of 4 children and son of missionaries, played his collegiate basketball at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif., where as a 1975 freshman he played for his father, Tine Hardeman, who was on furlough and served as the college's interim head coach. T.J. then played the next 3 seasons for NAIA Hall of Famer Chet Kammerer. Along with his dad, who was a four-year letterman at Westmont in the mid-1950s, T.J.'s 3 younger siblings - Tom, Terri and Todd - also played basketball at Westmont.  Hardeman coached for 4 years his niece, Kelly (daughter of Todd), who was the PacWest Player of the Year in 2016.  In addition, his nephew, Josh (son of Todd), is a current member of the Cougar men's basketball team.

Hardeman graduated from Westmont in 1978 with a bachelor's degree in physical education. He earned a master's in curriculum and instruction from the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., in 1983.

T.J. and his wife, Cindy, live in Brea, Calif. They have four 4 adult children - Heidi, a former four-year basketball player at Biola; Katie, a former four-year hoopster at Westmont; and sons Travis and Trent, who both played on Hope International's men's basketball team and played for T.J. at Troy High.

HARDEMAN'S COLLEGIATE COACHING RECORD