During her playing career, WNBA legend Becky Hammon was never able to capture a title.

Tonight, the NBA Summer League’s first female head coach will have a chance to do just that.

Hammon’s Spurs will face off against the Phoenix Suns’ summer squad at 9 p.m. ET at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. After losing in Hammon’s head coaching debut on July 11, the Spurs have not lost since en route to a 5-1 overall record and a place in the third annual Vegas Summer League championship.

Hammon credits her 16-year WNBA career as “absolutely essential” to the newfound success she’s found in her new field.

“Without the WNBA, I don’t get to hone my skills as a basketball player, I’m not in hundreds and hundreds of film sessions as a player, I’m not out there leading a team on the court,” she said. “Without the WNBA, I go to Colorado State, maybe I play overseas for two years, then I come back and get a normal job. So the WNBA, it’s every reason why I’m standing here.”

Hammon is wading in uncharted waters. Last year, she became to first female to hold a full-time assistant coaching position in the NBA. The former Liberty and Stars floor general has looked comfortable in her lead role on the sidelines. She is demanding. She is forthright. She doesn’t hold back.

In other words: like mentor, like mentee. Gregg Popovich, under whom Hammon coached as an assistant in San Antonio last year, is much the same. The three-time NBA Coach of the Year bestowed head coaching duties unto Hammon earlier this summer. Hammon says that Popovich’s decision to recruit her to his staff can largely be attributed to her time in the WNBA and the opportunities she was afforded there.

“Coach Pop got to look at me run a team, got to look at me run pick-and-rolls,” Hammon said. “That just was not available back when I was coming out of school. We didn’t have the internet and all this stuff that we have access to now. But the fact that I was able to go to San Antonio and play, and he could observe me for the past eight years, don’t think he doesn’t do his homework. He absolutely does his homework.”

Hammon is a trailblazer, but she’s not the only female presence in a male-dominated league. In addition to Hammon, former first overall pick Lindsey Harding and 1996 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Nancy Lieberman served in assistant roles for the Toronto Raptors and Sacramento Kings, respectively, this summer.

Basketball Hall of Famer @NancyLieberman joins the @SacramentoKings bench for @NBASummerLeague #NBASummer pic.twitter.com/Zgf8pmUSWl

— WNBA (@WNBA) July 15, 2015