{"id":212125,"date":"2026-03-30T20:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T20:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/212125\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T20:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T20:29:08","slug":"ucf-fires-womens-basketball-coach-sytia-messer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/212125\/","title":{"rendered":"UCF fires women’s basketball coach Sytia Messer"},"content":{"rendered":"

UCF<\/a> fired women\u2019s basketball coach Sytia Messer<\/a> following four consecutive losing seasons.<\/p>\n

The school announced the move Monday, less than a month after the Knights finished with an 11-19 record.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis afternoon, we met with women\u2019s basketball head coach Sytia Messer to inform her that we will be moving in a new direction with the leadership of our program. We are grateful to Sytia for her commitment to UCF and the care she has shown for our student-athletes over the past four years. We wish her the best moving forward,\u201d UCF athletics director Terry Mohajir<\/a> said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal remains building a program that competes at a high level while providing exceptional educational services that prepare our student-athletes for success beyond graduation. In this next chapter for women\u2019s basketball, we are continuing to align our strategy to ensure we are investing in the ways that most directly impact success in today\u2019s landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will conduct a national search for a head coach who embraces this vision and can lead us forward in this new era.\u201d<\/p>\n

Messer, 48, was hired April 4, 2022, replacing Katie Abrahamson-Henderson, who left UCF to become the women\u2019s basketball head coach at the University of Georgia. Messer\u2019s deal was for five years and featured a base salary of $625,000 with an annual increase of $25,000.<\/p>\n

According to a source familiar with the situation, Messer\u2019s departure will have no financial impact on the program.<\/p>\n

UCF was 49-69 (42%) under Messer, including 14-55 (20%) in conference play.<\/p>\n

Her best season was 2022-23, when the Knights finished 14-15 overall and 4-11 in the American Athletic Conference. UCF joined the Big 12 the following season and the program never seemed to get its feet under it.<\/p>\n

UCF finished last (3-15) in the Big 12 in 2023-24, 12th (4-14) in 2024-25 and 14th (3-15) in 2025-26.<\/p>\n

Knights open spring football seeking toughness, more discipline<\/a><\/p>\n

Messer spent time as an assistant coach at Arkansas State, Memphis and Georgia Tech before serving as head coach at Tennessee Tech, where she led the Golden Eagles to a 54-41 record and an appearance in the WNIT during the 2010-11 season.<\/p>\n

She moved on to work for Hall of Fame coach Kim Mulkey, first at Baylor and then at LSU, before taking the job at UCF, where she inherited a program in the midst of a massive rebuild.<\/p>\n

The Knights\u2019 roster was depleted following the departure of Abrahamson-Henderson, leaving Messer to reload the roster through the transfer portal. Her first season featured a team that returned just 9% of its production from the previous season.<\/p>\n

Messer signed guard Kaitlin Peterson in 2023-24, with the junior transfer going on to earn All-Big 12 honors after leading the Big 12 in scoring with 20.7 points per game. Peterson stuck around for another season before transferring to Ole Miss this past offseason.<\/p>\n

Injuries hampered this year\u2019s team as leading scorer Leah Harmon (15.7 points per game) missed significant time at the end of the season.<\/p>\n

Matt Murschel can be reached at mmurschel@orlandosentinel.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UCF fired women\u2019s basketball coach Sytia Messer following four consecutive losing seasons. The school announced the move Monday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[111,28,114,1335,139,141,140,76046,110,3865],"class_list":{"0":"post-212125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-college-sports","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-orange-county","12":"tag-orlando","13":"tag-orlando-headlines","14":"tag-orlando-news","15":"tag-social-sports","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-ucf-knights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212125","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=212125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}