Joseph Allen Curl (December 1, 1954 – April 14, 2014) was an American women's basketball coach at the University of Houston.
Born in Sioux City, Iowa, Curl grew up in nearby South Sioux City, Nebraska and graduated from Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska in 1978 with a bachelor's degree and was a basketball player there.
After two years in that position, Curl became girls' basketball head coach and went 3–17 in the 1981–82 season.
[2] In 1984, Curl moved to Wichita, Kansas to become an assistant coach for a newly formed men's basketball program at Kansas Newman College (now Newman University, Wichita), in addition to a physical education teacher and athletic director at Saint Thomas Aquinas High School.
[4] Curl entered graduate school at the University of Central Oklahoma in 1987 and earned his master's degree in 1990.
[5] From 1990 to 1993, Curl was head women's basketball coach at Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, Texas and went 56–23 in his three seasons as head coach, including a 26–4 record and number-one national ranking in the 1992–93 season.
[1][6] Curl had his first NCAA-level position in the 1993–94 as head women's basketball coach at Stephen F. Austin State University, during which he helped the Ladyjacks to the Southland Conference women's basketball tournament title and NCAA tournament appearance.