One day after the men’s program was upset and knocked out of the 2026 NCAA Tournament, the Florida Gators announced that Tami Reiss has been hired as head coach Todd Golden’s counterpart, leading the women’s basketball team. Reiss, who spent the last seven seasons leading Rhode Island, ended the year having brought the Rams to their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 30 years.
A three-time All-American at Virginia, where she played alongside South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley, Reiss served for three years as a Cavaliers assistant immediately after her playing career ended before being selected No. 5 overall in the inaugural 1997 WNBA Draft.
She returned to college coaching in 2011, working as an assistant at San Diego State, Cal State Fullerton and Syracuse before getting tapped for the URI job. The Rams never won more than 17 games in a season across the 23 years prior to Reiss taking over the program.
Reiss achieved as much in five straight seasons, leading Rhode Island to a 22-7 record in Year 3 with the team finishing the 2025-26 campaign at 25-8 (16-2 Atlantic-10), earning its first March Madness appearance since 1996. She won the A-10 regular-season title in 2023, swept the conference’s championships in 2026 and was named A-10 Coach of the Year on three occasions.
Florida has promoted its hiring of Reiss as bringing in “one of the most dynamic rising leaders in college basketball” who is a “proven program builder, elite recruiter and relentless competitor with championship experience.”
“I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to coach at the highest level, and it doesn’t get any better than the SEC in terms of women’s basketball,” she said in a press release. “Between Florida’s academic reputation, which is very important to me, and the resources available to the program, I believe we have all the pieces necessary to build a championship-caliber team that the university and community will be proud of and excited to support. I can’t wait to get down to Gainesville and get started.”
In a half-century of existence, Gators women’s basketball is the University of Florida’s only athletic program to never win an SEC championship. Florida’s leadership has rarely shown a willingness to develop the team into a perennial winner. The hope is that Reiss will get a fresh start with the resources necessary to compete in a conference that is the home to Staley and LSU’s Kim Mulkey, whose teams have combined to win three of the last four national championships.
“Women’s basketball, like every other sport in the SEC, is as competitive as it’s ever been. We at Florida believe we are positioned to win and win big. Thanks to [the] support of Gator Nation and our supporters and our boosters, the investment in Florida’s women’s basketball program has never been stronger,” athletic director Scott Stricklin claimed at Reiss’ introductory press conference.
No specifics were provided to back up Stricklin’s claim.
“I believe in the potential and the greatness of the University of Florida,” said Reiss, explaining why she chose the Gators as her next project. “It’s a place where I can restructure it, I can rebuild it, and there’s a few things they’ve never done here. The most glaring one, obviously, is they have not won a national championship. … I don’t like to inherit. I like to build.”
“The commitment to the basketball program, the resources needed to compete and win at [this] level — they match my vision,” she continued. “The alignment from adminsitaration to myself to my staff to my players is going to be to compete that first year, get to the postseason, gradually trust in the process, win championships, SEC championships, and ultimately, every head coach’s goal – and if it isn’t, I don’t think you should be coaching — is to win a national championship.”
The Gators have won five NCAA Tournament games this century. They have not advanced to the second weekend in nearly three decades — 1998 under Carol Ross, the best coach in program history, who managed an Elite Eight berth the year prior. The second weekend should be an annual minimum expectation for Florida, but it cannot be until leadership stops operating with its hands in its pockets.
UF has won SEC championships in soccer, softball and volleyball with national titles in the prior two sports and excruciating finishes in the latter. Its swimming & diving and track & field programs have dominated the league and national stages, leading to individual and team glory that has expanded internationally into the Olympics. Gators lacrosse, which was founded in 2010 (35 years after women’s basketball was established), has already reached three Final Fours and won 25 conference titles (regular season, tournament) in just 15 years.
Stricklin’s lack of success hiring coaches at Florida (outside of Todd Golden) — and his utter failure evaluating Kelly Rae Finley’s predecessor, Cameron Newbauer — means fans have no choice but to take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to his new signing.
Reiss’ first job will be retaining her players, including sophomores Liv McGill and Me’Arah O’Neil and junior Laila Reynolds, three McDonald’s All-Americans on the Gators’ roster — the second, third and fourth ever signed in program history.
From there, she will need to deliver on a wide variety of promises made in her opening press conference, including how she will recruit and retain players, the type of staff members who will be signed to support the program and the brand of basketball the team will play in pursuit of both entertaining fans and suceeding at a level never seen before in Gainesville, Florida.
“The commitment here, this year, when my agent was negotiating … he came back and he said, ‘They didn’t blink. They didn’t negotiate. They hit every point that you needed to be successful at the University of Florida,'” Reiss shared. “I would not have taken this job if I didn’t believe in the commitment from the administration.”
