Florida women’s basketball coach Amanda Butler gets two-year extension; report: assistants gone

By Adam Silverstein
March 11, 2015

Updated on Thursday at 4:45 p.m.

Florida Gators athletic director Jeremy Foley on Wednesday announced a two-year contract extension for women’s basketball coach Amanda Butler, keeping her with the program through the 2018-19 season.

Butler, who behind Carol Ross (1990-02) is the second-winningest and second-longest-tenured coach in program history, is just 153-112 (.577) at Florida, 56-68 (.447) in Southeastern Conference play over eight seasons. The Gators have never advanced past the second round of the NCAA Tournament under Butler.

“Clearly, the results of last season were not what anyone, including Coach Butler, had hoped. That said, I continue to strongly feel that Amanda is the right person to get Florida women’s basketball to be a contender in this league and nationally. She’s a Gator and will keep working tirelessly to elevate this program,” said Foley in a release.


Butler, a former Florida guard (1990-94) who took over for Carolyn Peck in 2007-08, said she is “appreciative” of both Foley executive associate athletics director Lynda Tealer for maintaining a belief in her leading the program.

“Great accomplishments are always preceded by a shared vision. Our vision is one of always developing our student athletes in all areas of their lives and always competing for championships,” she began.

“Last season was disappointing for me and Gator Nation. Gator Nation deserves excellence – the very best coaching, student-athletes and results. We will do whatever is necessary to make Florida women’s basketball a cornerstone of pride for our University of Florida. I am very excited about what the future holds for our program.”

The Gators have long been hoping for a perennially-competitive women’s basketball team with administrators and fans rightfully seeing it as the lone Florida program never to have any substantial success. UF has not advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament since 1997 nor made it to even the Sweet 16 since 1998, appearing in the NCAA Tournament just seven times in the last 16 seasons and only advancing to the second round four times (2001, 2004, 2009, 2012). The Gators have also never won an SEC title, regular-season or tournament.

Florida has dealt with a rash of transfers and seen players forced off the program for behavioral issues in recent years, causing the roster to be depleted despite Butler impressively hauling in some top-tier recruits while leading a team without a history of national success.

Update: According to Swish Appeal, which is citing “multiple sources,” Gators assistant coaches David Lowery (eighth season) and Angela Crosby (third season) will not be retained by Butler, leaving Murriel Page (fifth season) as the lone assistant on staff.

8 Comments

  1. Ken (CA) says:

    wow…gotta scratch my head at this one. she has been here for years and consistently put out a mediocre to bad product. I thought finally they would cut her loose especially after seeing what finding a coach like Dawn Staely did at a perennially bad program like USC. He found diamond in the rough Billy D. there has to be a women’s coach out there like Dawn Staley that can create a watchable product. Women’s hoops is just about the only UF women’s program I can’t stomach watching it is so bad year in and year out.

    • jimmyjohns says:

      Agree. Not sure how a 13-17 season with multiple disciplinary issues gets you an extension.

      • Ken (CA) says:

        I have no issues with how she handled disciplinary issues. Who would have thought that the best player UF ever was able to sign in recruiting would turn around and commit armed robbery? What does concern me is the fact that there has been no significant progress forward in all her time here. She has never proven to be a successful coach and done little more than hold as a middle of the pack SEC coach. apparently, women’s hoops is OK to be in the bottom 1/3 of the SEC with the random occasion upset every 2-3 years.

        Foley has done so well with every other women’s sport (golf a bit up and down but at least competitive), I don’t get why he finds consistent bottom 50% of SEC and once in a while making it to NCAA tourney acceptable.

  2. SW Fl Joe says:

    Foley’s statement is erially similar to what he said about Muschamp. I hope Butler’s extension works out better. I agree 100% with what Ken said. I thought for sure she was gone especially after the total lack of effort by her team in the SEC tournament. And I have absolutely zero confidence she can make her program even close to the level the other women’s programs are at.

    • Ken (CA) says:

      Similar, but different… Thank goodness he didn’t turn around at that point and give WM a 2 yr extension. He did that after 11-2 season not after 4-7, although that was still clearly not a great decision.

      And wow, Adam, I have actually moved to Safari rather than IE because it seems more stable on this website, but I get hit over and over with auto-play in Safari. Have you set up cross-browser support? I don’t get the lag I was getting in IE, but the auto play ads i got 3 just while tying this msg which caused the comment.

      • I don’t know what’s going on with the auto play ads. I’ll have to look into it. IE sucks in general. I use the site with Chrome and Firefox and don’t really have issues with lag or anything.

        • Ken (CA) says:

          I won’t use chrome because I try to avoid Goggle as much as I can because I don’t like their data collection and who they are willing to give it to without legal requests, I am not particularly fond of any browser, but moving off of IE slowly, I tend to stay there a lot because the application I support is IE only for now and we haven’t made it cross browser compatible, that will be in the next version, just was an FYI first time I hit here in Safari, would hate it to be dependent on what cookies might store, because don’t play that game much.

  3. SaraGator says:

    Wow, she must have incriminating photos of Foley.

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