Florida hires Rhode Island's Tammi Reiss as women's basketball coach

Tammi Reiss and Dawn Staley played together on Virginia teams coached by Debbie Ryan that went to three consecutive Final Fours in the early 1990s. Now, they’re going to be coaching against each other in the SEC. Three people familiar with Florida ’s search for its next women’s basketball coach told USA TODAY Sports on Monday afternoon that Reiss will be hired to lead the Gators.

Reiss, 55, has been the head coach at Rhode Island since 2019 and has piled up an overall record of 138-73. She’s won two regular season championships in the Atlantic-10 and won the conference tournament this season, punching the Rams’ ticket to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1996. She inherits a Florida program coming off a 18-15 season, 5-11 in SEC play under Kelly Rae Finley, who was fired on March 9 after five seasons.

Finley’s Gators missed the NCAA Tournament in each of the last four seasons and failed to win more than five SEC games. Florida had a five-game losing streak to open SEC play this year and in the non-conference portion of their schedule suffered to mid-majors Navy and Tulsa. Aside from a run under Carol Ross in the 1990s, Florida doesn’t have a history of success in women’s basketball.

Between 1993 and 1999, they went seven consecutive NCAA Tournaments, with the high-water mark being an Elite Eight appearance in 1997 with a team powered by DeLisha Milton-Jones. Between 1997 and 2004, the Gators produced 10 WNBA Draft picks. Since Ross resigned in 2002, the Gators haven’t gone to consecutive NCAA Tournaments.