The Cal women’s basketball players have a new pregame ritual: get taped, hydrate, focus. And rub their coach’s belly.

“Before every game I touch her stomach,” said forward Kristine Anigwe. “It’s a miracle. It’s really special it’s happening right in front of us.”

Head coach Lindsay Gottlieb told her team in early November that she and her partner, Patrick Martin, are expecting a baby, due May 9. Gottlieb has created a family atmosphere in her six years at Cal, and the baby news has only added to that sense of commitment and bonding.

“There are a lot of ways to raise a child, but everyone says it takes a community,” Gottlieb said. “I feel very fortunate that this will be our community.”

When Gottlieb, 39, was a young girl, she wasn’t planning out her wedding and predicting the number of kids she would have. The daughter of a civil court judge and a stockbroker, the main topics at the dinner table with Lindsay and her three older siblings were politics and sports.

“I was planning a Senate run,” said Gottlieb, who went to the Democratic National Convention with her father, Stephen, when she was 14.

She got into coaching after playing at Brown, inspired by the idea that she could have an impact on young women through sports. Her decision to have a baby will be another way to be a role model.

“I hope if there’s one new thing I can be for them is an example that you can be really into your job and also have a family,” Gottlieb said. “That’s modern America and women can do that.”

Gottlieb, who received a three-year contract extension in October, didn’t plan her pregnancy as perfectly as it seems. But the timing couldn’t be better. Her young team, which she believes can exceed well beyond the sixth-place Pac-12 finish that was predicted for it in the preseason, could even make the Final Four in early April and she would, in theory, still be able to coach.

She caught a break in October when a tournament scheduled for December in Puerto Rico was switched to Las Vegas due to fears about the Zika virus. No school officials knew at the time that Gottlieb was pregnant, but the cancellation alleviated her concerns.

Aside from some serious morning sickness in the first trimester, Gottlieb’s only side effect of pregnancy is her need for more sleep. And a constant craving for cheese and pickle sandwiches on a Dutch crunch roll.

She told her team about the baby in a monthly “Lessons with Geezy” session. “Geezy” — the team’s nickname for Coach G — spends time with her players on non-basketball topics, like financial planning or social media. The session in early November was about siblings, and the team’s director of basketball operations, Jill Culbertson, collected pictures of all the players’ siblings for a slide show. There was a lot of hilarity, guessing who belonged with which player.

When the final picture, a sonogram image, was shown, there was momentary confusion.

“This is all of your new sibling,” Gottlieb told them.

Gottlieb had already told her former players Brittany Boyd and Reshanda Gray, who had been asking her about having a baby since they were freshmen.

“She would laugh it off and call us crazy,” Gray said in a text from Naples, Italy, where she is playing professional basketball. “Coach G’s specialty is creating a family atmosphere. A lot of programs may say they are family-oriented but really aren’t. But she cares about us as people way before she cares about us as basketball players.”

Even while she was telling her players they were crazy for asking her when she would have a baby, it was in the back of Gottlieb’s mind. She had her dream job. She was financially secure. She was older. She could feel her clock ticking.

“Biology is real,” she said. “I knew I wanted to be a successful coach but that’s not enough for me. I thought that ultimately I wanted to be able to do this job that is very consuming but also do the other thing. I always believed as a woman you could do both.”

Meeting Martin, who is in financial planning and analysis, made everything fall into place.

Gottlieb has sought advice from other female coaches who have children, like Gonzaga’s Lisa Fortier and Colorado’s JR Payne, as well as women in other professions, such as her sister, who is a law professor at New York University and a mother of two.

“Since this news came out, I’ve gotten a gazillion text messages, in particular from a lot from moms in coaching,” Gottlieb said. “I’ve written to people and said, ‘You’re a role model and I’m going to hit you up for advice.’”

She knows that because both she and Martin have demanding jobs, they will need a nanny.

“I’m OK with adjusting to our lifestyle, and it may look different than what my mom did,” Gottlieb said.

It may look different, but it will be what Gottlieb has been striving for ever since she got to Cal: one big blue-and-gold family.

Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: akillion@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion