Reiss, a three-time Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year, spent seven seasons with the Rams and led them to the NCAA tournament for the first time in 30 years earlier this month. Rhode Island lost to Alabama<\/a> in the first round.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the Rams won a school-record 28 games to go along with a share of the A-10 regular-season championship and the conference tournament.<\/p>\n Editor’s Picks Reiss, 55, played alongside Dawn Staley at Virginia<\/a> and appeared in three consecutive Final Fours (1990-92), including the 1991 national title game. She was part of eight NCAA tournament appearances as an assistant coach, including four at Syracuse<\/a>, before arriving at Rhode Island.<\/p>\n She replaces Kelly Rae Finley, who was fired<\/a> two weeks ago while the Gators were poised to miss the NCAA tournament for the fourth consecutive year.<\/p>\n Finley went 93-75 in five seasons in Gainesville, including 30-50 in SEC play. She put together one of the program’s best collections of talent in recent years, with Liv McGill<\/a>, Me’Arah O’Neal<\/a> and Laila Reynolds<\/a> giving the team three McDonald’s All Americans in its starting lineup.<\/p>\n But the trio was unable to deliver enough wins in one of the country’s deepest leagues.<\/p>\n Reiss will try to revive women’s basketball at Florida, which is the only program on campus that has never won a conference title. The Gators have seemed reluctant to funnel as much money as SEC heavyweights LSU<\/a> and South Carolina<\/a> into a program that has provided little, if any, return on investment for decades.<\/p>\n Reiss, though, has a track record of building.<\/p>\n The Rams tripled their average attendance during her tenure and raised the program’s first three conference banners. Her overall record is 138-73, including 96 wins over the past four seasons. She twice set the program record for victories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mar 23, 2026, 02:45 PM ET GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida hired Rhode Island‘s Tammi Reiss as the program’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-202823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202823","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=202823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/r1628369_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&w=130&h=130&scale=crop&location=center.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n