Gabe Lazo to be UCF head coach instead of assistant under Kim Mulkey

Gabe Lazo will not be joining Kim Mulkey’s staff at LSU. The former Tennessee assistant coach is going home. UCF has hired Lazo to be the next head coach of its women’s basketball program, the Knights announced Saturday morning.

This will be the first collegiate head coaching job for Lazo, who spent the last few seasons as an assistant in the SEC. The move to UCF concludes an eventful past two weeks for Lazo, a native of Miami, Florida. For the past two seasons, he had been an assistant at Tennessee under head coach Kim Caldwell and spearheaded the recruiting push for the Lady Vols, helping them land multiple McDonald’s All-Americans and top-level talent out of the transfer portal.

Tennessee’s tumultuous season ended with eight consecutive losses and was capped off by a first-round NCAA Tournament defeat to NC State on March 20. Seven days later, Lazo resigned from his position in Knoxville. On March 31, LSU announced that Lazo was joining Mulkey’s staff to fill the position left open by Gary Redus, who became the head coach at Rutgers .

In a statement, Mulkey said Lazo had an “unbelievable ability to teach the game and recruit the best players in the country. ” But the day before his hiring was announced by LSU, UCF finally decided to fire head coach Sytia Messer after four seasons. UCF lost to Kansas by 21 points in its first game of the Big 12 Tournament on March 4, bringing Messer’s fourth disappointing season to an end.