{"id":185320,"date":"2026-03-10T07:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T07:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/185320\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T07:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T07:21:10","slug":"florida-firing-womens-basketball-coach-after-five-seasons-could-shake-up-the-sec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/185320\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Firing Women’s Basketball Coach After Five Seasons, Could Shake Up the SEC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/a>Photo via Florida Athletics<\/p>\n

The first coaching change in the SEC women\u2019s basketball landscape this offseason is official. After her fifth year at Florida, Kelly Rae Finley has been fired, the school announced<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n

Finley is coming off an 18-15 (5-11 SEC) season. The Gators are unlikely to make the NCAA Tournament, which would mean missing the dance for the fourth-straight season.<\/p>\n

Finley\u2019s best year came in her first season. During the 2021-22 campaign, she led the team to a 21-11 (10-6) record before losing in the Round of 64. Overall, she\u2019ll finish 93-75 (30-50) at Florida.<\/p>\n

More From RTI:\u00a0Former Lady Vols Basketball National Champion Forward Fired as Memphis\u2019 Head Coach<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to thank the administration for entrusting me with the development of Florida\u2019s women\u2019s basketball team over these last four-plus seasons,\u201d Finley said. \u201cI\u2019ve been blessed with the opportunity to work with a number of amazing coaches, support staff and boosters during my time in Gainesville who believed in what we were doing to put Florida women\u2019s basketball back on the map.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m immensely proud of the work we put in and the things we accomplished together. But I\u2019m most proud of our players. As much as college athletics is about wins and losses, for me it is also about developing young women. The opportunity to work with such an amazing group of players over the years here in Florida has been an absolute joy, and I\u2019m looking forward to seeing the impact this current group of Gators will have moving forward both as amazing athletes on the court, and as high-character people throughout the rest of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Florida will undergo a national search for its next head coach. The program could draw some big names, as well, with coaches potentially unhappy at their current schools.<\/p>\n

The most popular name to kick off the coaching search is Ole Miss\u2019 Yolett \u2018Coach Yo\u2019 McPhee-McCuin. She has had success leading the Rebels, and has been a popular projected candidate in coaching searches the past few seasons.<\/p>\n

If the Gators can pull away a sitting head coach, it could cause a chain reaction as dominoes fall across the country and potentially in the SEC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo via Florida Athletics The first coaching change in the SEC women\u2019s basketball landscape this offseason is official.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,2530,30,29,29826,24261],"class_list":["post-185320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-gators","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-womens-basketball","tag-kelly-rae-finley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}