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Andrea AdelsonApr 5, 2026, 04:47 AM<\/p>\n
Close<\/a> ACC reporter. Multiple Authors<\/p>\n UCF<\/a> hired Gabe Lazo as its women’s basketball coach on Saturday to replace Sytia Messer, who was fired earlier this week<\/a> after four straight losing seasons.<\/p>\n Five days ago, Lazo was hired as an assistant at LSU<\/a> after spending the last two seasons as an assistant under Kim Caldwell at Tennessee<\/a>.<\/p>\n A Miami native, this is Lazo’s first head coaching job, calling UCF “a special place with tremendous potential” in a statement Saturday.<\/p>\n “Gabe represents what we were looking for in the next leader of our women’s basketball program,” UCF athletic director Terry Mohajir said in a statement. “He’s a proven competitor at every level of the game, with deep Florida roots, an elite ability to connect with people, and a track record of developing student-athletes on and off the court. He has consistently helped elevated every program he’s been part of as a head coach and assistant.”<\/p>\n In four seasons with the Knights, Messer went 49-69 and never posted a winning record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrea AdelsonApr 5, 2026, 04:47 AM Close ACC reporter. Joined ESPN.com in 2010. Graduate of the University of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-585547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Joined ESPN.com in 2010.
\n Graduate of the University of Florida.<\/p>\n