This past offseason, 64 Division I women’s basketball programs saw changes at head coach.
Some of those were retirements, like Joe McKeown stepping aside at Northwestern and Rick Insell calling it quits after a long run at Middle Tennessee State. Others were firings that a lot of folks saw coming, like Tory Verdi being ousted from Pitt or UCF letting Sytia Messer go.
And then a few others were unpredictable, like Virginia parting ways with Amaka Agugua-Hamilton after a run to the Sweet 16, which then created openings at Richmond and Vermont with a domino effect. Katie Abrahamson-Henderson resigning from Georgia after an NCAA Tournament bid was a surprise too, and that led to changes at McNeese State and Morehead State.
Kristy Curry opting to leave
Alabama for USF was difficult to predict as well.
Among the Power 4 conferences, there were three firings in the ACC, three changes in the Big Ten, two in the SEC and one in the Big 12. Dozens of others followed at the mid-major level.
To be sure, like most offseasons, women’s college basketball will see another flurry of coaching changes between February and April of 2027. Last season, VCU was the first to make a move and set off the coaching carousel by firing Beth O'Boyle on Feb. 2. After a lengthy search lasting nearly two months, they tapped Chelsea Banbury of High Point as her replacement.
One coaching change is imminent this year, as Bill Fennelly announced this season will be his last at Iowa State after more than three decades on the job.
Entering the 2026-27 season, here are the coaches under the most pressure, a list assembled by USA TODAY Sports after conversations with coaches, agents and stakeholders around the sport:
Megan Gebbia, Wake Forest
Amid ACC Spring Meetings in May 2022, Wake Forest athletic director John Currie made one of the most puzzling decisions in recent years when he decided to fire Jen Hoover — a Wake Forest Hall of Famer as a player and the program’s all-time leader in wins — as head coach of the Demon Deacons. Just the season before, Wake had made the NCAA Tournament for the second time in program history. The only other time the Deacons went dancing was when Hoover was a player in the late 1980s.
Currie’s options to replace Hoover that late in the coaching cycle were limited and he turned to Megan Gebbia, who had guided American University in the Patriot League to a handful of conference championships and three NCAA Tournament bids. What Gebbia inherited is a program coaches and agents around the country often refer to as the hardest job in the ACC and among the worst-resourced women’s basketball programs in the Power 4.
In four years on the job in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Gebbia is 47-80 overall and 13-59 in ACC play. Last year, Wake played in the third-tier WNIT and lost their tournament opener at home to Maryland Eastern Shore. For UMES, it was their first win ever against a Power 4 opponent.
“That is the next step for us, to be able to get to eight wins in the (ACC) and not sit at four (in a single season). I think that's kind of what our goal would be. You just never know with a different group, right? Because every year the roster changes,” Gebbia told USA TODAY Sports earlier this month. “We're on the right track as far as pushing the program forward and gaining some traction here this year.”
Details of Gebbia’s contract are not public because Wake is a private school, but in 2023 she was granted an extension after winning 17 games in her debut season at the helm of the Demon Deacons. Since then, the results have gone downhill.
Joni Taylor, Texas A&M
When Hall of Fame coach Gary Blair retired in 2022, Texas A&M poached Joni Taylor away from a fellow SEC program, Georgia, where she enjoyed success — going to four NCAA Tournaments in seven seasons and reaching as high as 10th in the national rankings. Unfortunately for the Aggies, as the landscape of college athletics has shifted dramatically, Taylor has not been able to replicate those accomplishments in College Station, Texas.
She’s 52-65 overall and 18-46 in SEC play in four seasons. Taylor has taken the former national championship-winning program to March Madness once, losing in the first round to Nebraska in 2024.
Taylor earned some goodwill last season with a strong finish. After a six-game losing streak, the Aggies closed the regular season winning six of seven games, including three victories over nationally ranked opponents. Texas A&M played their way onto the NCAA Tournament bubble, but had to settle for a bid to the second-tier WBIT where they lost their tournament opener to McNeese State. In the offseason, the player that would’ve been the Aggies’ top returner — Fatmata Janneh — transferred to Tennessee.
Taylor enters the season on the fifth year of a six-year contract. To earn an extension, the Aggies likely need to be dancing in March.
Katie Gearlds, Purdue
Purdue made the decision to retain Katie Gearlds — an alum of the school — as its head coach last March after a 13-17 season. The cost to fire her last season, according to a copy of her contract viewed by USA TODAY Sports, would have been a pricy with a $1.3 million buyout.
Gearlds was hired in 2021 and won 17 games in her first season, a big improvement from seven victories in the previous year under Sharon Versyp. The next year, Purdue went 19-11 overall, 9-8 in Big Ten play, and made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in six years but lost in the First Four to St. John’s.
Since then, the results have been lackluster. Over the past three seasons, Purdue is 13-41 in Big Ten play.
Gearlds contract runs through 2029, but Purdue hired a new athletic director, Tommy McClelland, in August. It’s unclear how patient he will be if the results don’t improve.
Kate Paye, Stanford
When people think about consistent excellence in women’s college basketball, Stanford is one of the first programs that comes to mind. From 1988 to 2024, they never missed an NCAA Tournament and won three national championships under Tara VanDerveer.
Ahead of the 2024-25 season — Stanford’s first in the ACC — VanDerveer retired and handed the reins to her longtime assistant, Kate Paye, who played for and coached under the Hall of Famer. But, put simply, Paye’s teams haven’t lived up to the standard that Stanford established over the past three and a half decades.
In Paye’s first season, the Cardinal went 16-15 overall, missing March Madness for the first time since the Reagan Administration. Last season, they improved to 21-14, but were left on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble. To make matters worse, four of Stanford’s top five scorers transferred and a report in May accused Paye of fostering “a dysfunctional and toxic environment.” She has since dismissed that as “click-bait junk journalism.”
At Stanford, anything short of playing in March Madness seems subpar. The Cardinal missing the NCAA Tournament for a third consecutive year this season — especially with eight additional bids up for grabs — would be jarring.
“We're excited about more opportunity. That certainly is our goal to make the tournament and have a deep run in the tournament,” Paye told USA TODAY Sports. “I'm very excited about our roster that we put together. We're young, we're hungry.”
Katrina Merriweather, Cincinnati
A former player for the Bearcats, Katrina Merriweather returned to her alma mater in 2023 and agreed to a six-year contract after having success at her previous coaching stops. She was a three-time Horizon League Coach of the Year at Wright State and went to a pair of NCAA Tournaments, then went 38-23 in two seasons at Memphis with a run to the Super 16 of the WNIT.
Since moving to Cincinnati, the road to success for Merriweather has been challenging. The offseason she took over, the Bearcats moved to the Big 12 from the American Conference and have gone 18-36 in conference play. Merriweather did land a pair of top 65 recruits last year — Caliyah DeVillasee and Dee Alexander — but the latter battled injuries and Cincy finished 11-20 overall, their worst record yet under Merriweather.
Those top recruits are a year older and the Bearcats added some strong players in the transfer portal, like Sahnya Jah from SMU. Cincinnati having a breakthrough season could go a long way in getting Merriweather some assurances on her job security.
“I'm one of those people where pressure is what pressure does. I don't get into it very much. I think we approach every day like we want to be champions. We talk about practicing and playing and scrimmaging like you are playing the No. 1 team in the country,” Merriweather told USA TODAY Sports. “The plan absolutely is that when it's (NCAA Tournament) selection time, Cincinnati is popping up on that screen.”
Other coaches under pressure entering this season: Dalila Eshe (Yale), Billi Chambers (Xavier) Erin Batth (Providence), Rebecca Tillett (Saint Louis), Terry Nooner (Wichita State), Jill Pizzotti (DePaul), Ryan Gensler (Akron), Wesley Brooks (Utah State), Jennifer Leedham (Saint Peter’s), Jen Brown (Queens), Samantha Quigley Smith (SIU Edwardsville)
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The heat is on: Five women’s basketball coaches facing pressure this season
