The 2025 offseason in Division I women’s college basketball saw 61 programs make changes at head coach. The lengthy carousel season seemed to begin in February when Joye Lee-McNelis announced her retirement from Southern Miss and Robin Pingeton announced she was resigning from Missouri. The Tigers wound up being one of three SEC changes to get new coaches heading into the 2025-26 season, and Pingeton ended up getting a fresh start at Wisconsin.
If college football is an indicator, the 2026 coaching carousel season could be even more eventful. Some leaders in college athletics were hesitant to make big changes last season with uncertainty around the House Settlement looming. Now, athletic directors have a sense of what they’re dealing with. Eight weeks into this college football season, there are already nine openings, including some at major programs like Penn State, Arkansas, Oklahoma State and Virginia Tech.
Before the season begins, we’ll take a look around the sport and examine some hot seats and situations where a potential change at head coach could occur.
A coaching carousel gone wrong
- Katie Abrahamson-Henderson, Georgia
When Gary Blair retired in 2022, it kickstarted a chain of coaching changes that hasn’t really worked out for any of the programs involved.
Taylor, who was the SEC Coach of the Year in 2021 and was sustaining success at Georgia, hasn’t found the same sort of consistency in College Station. At Texas A&M, she went 9-20 in Year One, bounced to 19-13 with a March Madness appearance in her second season, then regressed back to 10-19 last season. She’s 11-37 overall in SEC play and wasn’t able to retain her best recruit, Janiah Barker, who is now at Tennessee after a stop at UCLA.
The Aggies spent in the portal this season, landing highly sought-after Saint Peter’s forward Fatmata Janneh, Sacred Heart guard Ny’Ceara Pryor, Liberty sharpshooter Pien Steenbergen, 6-foot-3 Little Rock center Emerald Parker, Wichita State starter Salese Blow, All-Big West talent Jordan Webster and Miami guard Lemyah Hylton. Texas A&M is projected to finish 14th in the SEC this season, according to the league’s preseason poll. If this group of mostly mid-major transfers can’t rise to the level of SEC play and outperform that expectation, Taylor could be looking for a new gig this spring.
While Taylor is one of the 10 highest paid coaches in the sport, recent history tells us that Texas A&M is not afraid to pay someone to not coach. See also: Fisher, Jimbo.
At Taylor’s last stop, Georgia, Abrahamson-Henderson had a solid first campaign where she led the Bulldogs to an NCAA Tournament win over Florida State, but did that with a team led by five seniors — a group that included three players who followed her from UCF, a one-year transfer rental from Texas, and Javyn Nicholson, who stayed at UGA after Taylor left. She failed to replace those talented players and since then, it’s been rough, as she’s gone 7-25 in SEC play over the past two seasons.
Abrahamson-Henderson turned UCF into a mid-major power when it was in the American Conference, but the transition to the Big 12 under Messer has been difficult. To call it a disaster might be a bit hyperbolic, but the Knights have yet to post a winning record since Messer took the reins. In two seasons in the Big 12, they’re 7-29. Multiple sources told SB Nation that UCF considered firing Messer last spring.
Of the three, Messer’s seat seems the hottest and would be the cheapest to fire, but all three could do themselves a big favor by making the NCAA Tournament this season.
- Carolyn Kieger, Penn State
Kieger is entering her seventh season with the Nittany Lions and has yet to make the NCAA Tournament. Her lone season with an overall winning record came during the 2023-24 campaign, but her 22-win squad was left on the wrong side of the bubble. What followed last season was one of the worst seasons in Penn State women’s basketball history, where the Nittany Lions won just one Big Ten game — the second time that’s happened in Kieger’s tenure.
Couple the poor product on the court with this story published by Onward State last season where several former players, some of them speaking on the record, said their mental health suffered while playing for Kieger. Penn State stood by their coach last season, but it’s difficult to see them doing that for much longer if the results on the court don’t dramatically improve.
- Krista Gerlich, Texas Tech
In case you haven’t heard, Texas Tech is spending big on athletics, and not just on football. The money faucet, however, seemingly hasn’t been turned on yet for Gerlich — a Texas Tech alum who was a starter alongside Sheryl Swoopes on the Red Raiders’ 1993 national title team.
The results under Gerlich haven’t been great. In five seasons, she’s yet to make an NCAA Tournament and has never posted a winning record in Big 12 play.
Recruiting has been so-so as well. While the Red Raiders have landed four ESPN Top 100 prospects since 2021, they’ve only retained two of them. And Texas Tech had arguably the best recruit in the country in its backyard in Lubbock this year in Aaliyah Chavez, who picked Oklahoma over the Red Raiders and other major offers. Ahead of this upcoming season, Texas Tech brought in transfers from Campbell, UTSA, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Canisius and the JUCO ranks. Gerlich also shuffled her staff, notably hiring Adrian Walters away from North Carolina. Time will tell if these changes pay off.
- Kelly rae Finley, Florida
At most SEC schools, a coach would probably get fired for going 15-33 in league play over the course of three seasons. But, compared to other sports in Gainesville, there seems to be a lack of investment in the women’s basketball program and leadership at the school might allow Finley to have another mediocre season, considering the last head coach resigned amid a scandal. The Gators might also be ponying up a buyout for its football coach, which could make them hesitant to spend on women’s basketball in the same year.
It hasn’t all been bad under Finley. In her first season with a fragile program, she led the Gators to 21 wins and an NCAA Tournament appearance as the interim coach. But in the three years since, the Gators haven’t come close to contending for a tournament appearance.
- Joanna Bernabei-McNamee, Boston College
If you’re a part of the brass at Boston College, the question you have to ask yourself is this: At our current level of investment in women’s basketball, can we do better? The answer might be no.
Aside from an eight -year run where the Eagles made seven NCAA Tournaments under Cathy Inglese, Boston College has largely always performed as they have under Bernabei-McNamee — competent and competitive, but only good enough to have a shot at the NCAA Tournament about every four years.
The Eagles would have gone dancing in 2020 if not for the COVID-19 pandemic, and they were left on the wrong side of the bubble when they went 10-8 in ACC play in 2022. Overall, in seven seasons there, Bernabei-McNamee is 108-106 overall and has six ACC Tournament wins. She’s recruited well, but often those players leave and wind up going to help other ACC teams win big — Taylor Soule was on Virginia Tech’s Final Four team, Maria Gakdeng helped North Carolina reach the Sweet 16, Taina Mair was a key part of Duke’s ACC Championship team last season.
From Boston College’s 16-18 team last season, its nine top scorers are gone. Six transfers and four freshmen have come in as Bernabei-McNamee had to rebuild her roster on the fly and under a tight budget again. There are some who believe Boston College needs a change at head coach, but unless the Eagles are also willing to increase their investment in the sport by a noticeable margin, replacing Bernabei-McNamee would be futile.
Boston College might consider the approach Virginia took with football this season: Invest in the roster and resources, not in the coaching search.
Northwestern: Longtime coach Joe McKeown has already announced that he will retire at the end of the season, his 18th year leading the Wildcats. According to multiple industry sources, Northwestern has already started calling potential candidates.
Rutgers: Coquese Washington is 33-64 overall and 10-44 in Big Ten play in three seasons.
Wake Forest: Megan Gebbia is 33-62 overall and 9-45 in ACC play in three seasons.
WNBA openings: Baylor’s Nicki Collen and South Florida’s Jose Fernandez have both been mentioned in reports connecting them to open jobs in the WNBA, specifically with the Dallas Wings. Fernandez interviewed for the Wings opening last year but ultimately turned it down. Collen has been an assistant and head coach in the WNBA and took the Dream to the playoffs in 2018, a season in which she was also named the league’s Coach of the Year.
Retirement nearing? This is where it’s worth mentioning that UConn’s Geno Auriemma is 71, N.C. State’s Wes Moore and Iowa State’s Bill Fennelly are 68, Boise State’s Gordy Presnell is 65, LSU’s Kim Mulkey is 63 and Oregon’s Kelly Graves is 62. While none of these veteran coaches are showing signs of slowing down, it’s hard to say when they might call it quits, especially as the landscape of college athletics keeps changing and many of their contemporaries — from Tara VanDerveer to Nick Saban and Mike Krzyzewski — have retired. The sport has seen its fair share of surprise retirements in recent years, including Miami’s Katie Meier and Georgia Tech’s Nell Fortner.
