When ASU women’s basketball coach Charli Turner Thorne roams the sidelines against Yale coach Chris Gobrecht on Thursday night, she won’t just be going up against one of the most successful coaches in women’s college basketball history.

She will be going up against one of her earliest mentors.

Gobrecht, who has amassed 462 career victories during her coaching career, was the head coach at Washington when Turner Thorne began her coaching journey as a graduate assistant during the 1988-1989 and 1989-1990 seasons.

“My tenure at Washington influenced me more than any other time of my coaching career,” Turner Thorne said. “I owe Chris a lot. She was a great mentor and she’s a great friend and she really did a lot for me.”

During Turner Thorne’s two seasons on the staff at UW, the Huskies went 51-13, were ranked as high as No. 3 in the nation and advanced to the Sweet 16 in 1989 and the Elite Eight in 1990.

“She was just a tremendous asset on our coaching staff,” Gobrecht said. “Obviously, she’s very sharp and really has an eagerness about the game of basketball.”

Turner Thorne also credits Gobrecht with teaching her the style of pressure defense that has become her trademark during her tenure at ASU.

After getting her graduate degree in higher education from UW in 1990, Turner Thorne moved onto an assistant coaching position at Santa Clara and then head coaching jobs with NAU and ASU. But even though they have not served on the same coaching staff for almost 20 years, the relationship between Turner Thorne and Gobrecht remains close.

“I feel fortunate to be able to call Charli one of my best friends in the profession,” Gobrecht said. “I’m obviously very, very proud of her, but I think I’ve learned as much from watching Charli’s teams than she ever learned from me originally.”

But the Gobrecht connection does not end there, as ASU associate head coach Meg Sanders played for Gobrecht at Cal State Fullerton from 1982-85.

Because of her ties to the Sun Devils, Gobrecht made the trip to Trenton, N.J., last season to watch Turner Thorne and Sanders coach the Sun Devils in their win over Texas A&M in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

“I felt so privileged just to be there and support [them],” Gobrecht said. “Those are just two people that are very special to me. It was sort of like being the proud aunt to be able to sit there and watch them both do their thing.”

But now, the two head coaches will face each other for the second time since Gobrecht has been at the helm at Yale. The Sun Devils defeated the Bulldogs 84-38 in Tempe during the 2007-08 season, and ASU’s first road contest of this season will be another stepping stone for a Sun Devil squad still breaking six new players into the rotation.

“We’re starting to figure ‘it’ out, and ‘it’ is just how to play hard, Sun Devil style,” Turner Thorne said. “We’re starting to get with staying with things and just really working hard every possession. I thought we came a long way from the exhibition game to the South Dakota State game.”

The contest against Yale is a start of a four-game road swing for the No. 14 Sun Devils (1-0), which should also give the players and coaches the chance to grow closer off the court.

“We’re trying to bring a lot of people together [into] one unit, and when you’re on the road, you bond,” senior guard Danielle Orsillo said.

“You make videos, you go to dinner every night [and] you’re always with each other. Since I’ve been here, we’ve never had a road trip like this, so it’s going to be really good for us.”

Yale is 2-0 so far this season and is coming off a 55-42 win over Army on Tuesday. The Bulldogs finished 11-17 last season and in seventh place in the Ivy League with a 4-10 record.

The Bulldogs return four starters from last year’s squad but have been paced in the early season by a new face in the starting five in sophomore forward Michelle Cashen. She has recorded double figures in points and rebounds in both of the Bulldogs’ games this season after recording just one double-double during her entire freshman campaign.

Senior guard/forward Melissa Colborne and Gobrecht’s daughter, junior forward Mady Gorbrecht, are each averaging 10 points and 6.5 rebounds per contest.

ASU’s strength also lies on the inside, as senior forward Kayli Murphy notched her second career double-double (12 points, 13 rebounds) in the Sun Devils’ opening win against SDSU and junior forward Becca Tobin scored a career-high 18 points.

Following the contest with Yale, the Sun Devils will head to Cincinnati for a showdown with No. 9 Xavier on Saturday. But even though a marquee nonconference battle is looming, Turner Thorne said her Sun Devils cannot overlook their immediate foes from the Ivy League.

“[Yale will] be dangerous,” Turner Thorne said. “They’re going to pressure us, and [they] definitely have some really good offensive players. They’ve got a lot of talent, Chris is a great coach and we’re definitely not looking past them.”

Reach the reporter at gina.mizell@asu.edu.