From 1976 to 1982, Sanderford accumulated 163 wins and 19 losses while coaching the women's basketball team at Louisburg Junior College.
[2] Growing up, Sanderford was on the basketball and baseball teams while attending Corinth Holders High School.
[3] After high school, Sanderford was a minor league baseball player for the Chicago White Sox.
In 1976, Sanderford joined the women's basketball team at Louisburg Junior College as their head coach.
[13] Sanderford was hired as the coach of the Western Kentucky Lady Toppers basketball team in June 1982.
[14] While coaching for Western Kentucky, he helped create an invitational basketball tournament sponsored by Bowling Green Bank during the early 1980s.
[16][17] His team reached the NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament twelve times, which included back-to-back competitions from 1985 to 1995.
[19][20] During the 1992 NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament, Sanderford and Western Kentucky were defeated by Stanford in the championship game.
He has held the Western Kentucky record for most women's basketball wins for over twenty years leading up to the 2021–22 season.
[26] Following the announcement, members of the Nebraska Legislature disagreed with Sanderford's hiring as it went against their requirement to have more women work at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
[27] For Ernie Chambers, he believed that paying Sanderford more than the previous coach, Angela Beck, was a form of sexism.
[18] During these years, Sanderford and Nebraska reached the second round of the 1998 NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament.
[39] That year, it was announced that Sanderford would work with the Hilltopper Sports Satellite Network as a color analyst for their men's basketball games.