Top 10 women’s college basketball coaches of the 2025-26 season

Women’s college basketball has never had a moment quite like this one. The sport is drawing record television numbers, sellout arenas, and national conversations that go well beyond the usual hardcore fanbase. At the center of all of it are the coaches, the architects who are building programs, recruiting generational talent, and making decisions on the sideline that determine whether a season ends in March heartbreak or an April championship. This is their sport right now, and the coaches on this list are the ones who defined 2025-26.

Some of them have been doing this for four decades and still haven’t slowed down. Others are relative newcomers who rebuilt programs from the ground up and are now competing at the highest level. A few walked into situations that demanded patience and process and delivered results that made the wait look short. What every name on this list shares is an ability to get the absolute most out of their roster, make the right call in the right moment, and build something that doesn’t crumble when the bracket gets hard.

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This ranking accounts for 2025-26 season performance, program trajectory, postseason results, and overall coaching excellence, measured against the richest and most competitive landscape the sport has ever seen.

10. Brenda Frese, Maryland Terrapins

2025-26 postseason: NCAA Sweet Sixteen | 20-plus seasons of excellence | 2006 national champion

Frese has been one of the most reliable coaches in the country for two decades, and 2025-26 was another reminder that Maryland under her direction is never to be taken lightly. She won a national championship in 2006 and has kept the Terrapins competitive through conference realignment, roster turnover, and the relentless arms race of modern recruiting. Her longevity at a single program while maintaining consistent postseason presence across five administrations and three conference affiliations is one of the most underappreciated coaching achievements in women’s college basketball. Maryland’s Sweet Sixteen run this season was another chapter in a career that shows no signs of winding down.

9. Kim Mulkey, LSU Tigers

2025-26 record: 29-6 | NCAA Tournament | Career winning pct: .860 | Never fewer than 26 wins in five seasons at LSU

Mulkey is the first coach in NCAA basketball history to win national championships as a player, assistant coach, and head coach, a distinction that tells you everything about the competitor she is. Her Tigers went 29-6 in 2025-26, and she has not won fewer than 26 games in any of her five seasons in Baton Rouge. Her career winning percentage of .860 is the second-best among active Division I coaches in any sport, and the program she has built at LSU remains one of the most talent-rich in the country.

8. Kara Lawson, Duke Blue Devils

2025-26 record: 27-9 | ACC regular season champion | Back-to-back ACC Tournament champion | NCAA Elite Eight | ACC Coach of the Year

Lawson arrived at Duke in 2021 to a program that had gone 17-13 the season before, and in five years she has turned it into an ACC powerhouse. This season she won the ACC regular season title outright, captured back-to-back conference tournament championships, and reached the Elite Eight for the second consecutive year. She won the 2026 ACC Coach of the Year and was named a Naismith Coach of the Year finalist. Her background as an Olympic gold medalist and NBA assistant has given her a distinctly modern coaching lens, and Duke women’s basketball is the direct beneficiary of it.

7. Vic Schaefer, Texas Longhorns

2025-26 postseason: Final Four | Third consecutive Final Four | Top-3 recruiting class nationally

Schaefer has built Texas into a powerhouse through recruiting classes that consistently land in the top three nationally, and the results have matched the hype every single season. The Longhorns made their third straight Final Four in 2025-26, losing to UCLA in the semifinals, putting Schaefer in very rare company among active coaches in the sport. He is thorough, demanding, and relentless in the transfer portal, and Texas now has the infrastructure and culture to compete for national championships on a recurring basis.

6. Niele Ivey, Notre Dame Fighting Irish

2025-26 record: 25-11 | Final Four | Naismith Coach of the Year finalist

Ivey’s 2025-26 season was a masterclass in roster management under pressure. She had just one returning starter and three players carried over from the previous season, and still guided Notre Dame all the way to the Final Four, where they fell to UConn. She installed a system, demanded toughness, and coaxed performances out of a group that had every reason to struggle. Her selection as a Naismith Coach of the Year finalist reflected the widespread respect she has earned across the sport. This Final Four run was the clearest statement yet of what Ivey is capable of building at Notre Dame.

5. Lindsay Gottlieb, USC Trojans

Big Ten contender | Top-3 recruiting class | JuJu Watkins era in full swing

Gottlieb is building something in Los Angeles with the potential to rival any program in the country, landing recruiting classes that once went exclusively to South Carolina and UConn. She has JuJu Watkins as the centerpiece of a program that went from fringe conversation to national title contention inside three seasons. As one of the few women’s basketball coaches with NBA sideline experience, having served as an assistant with the Cleveland Cavaliers, her player development philosophy is distinctly different from her peers, and it shows on the floor. The ceiling here is legitimately sky-high.

4. Geno Auriemma, UConn Huskies

2025-26 record: 38-1 | Final Four | 54-game winning streak | 25th Final Four all-time | Career wins: 1,288

Auriemma’s 41st season at UConn produced yet another historically dominant run. The Huskies went 38-0 before losing to South Carolina in the Final Four, ending a 54-game winning streak that had stretched back into the previous season. He has now taken 25 teams to the Final Four, won 12 national championships, and owns the all-time wins record for any Division I basketball coach in history. The fact that a 38-1 season lands him fourth on this list says everything about the quality of coaching above him this year.

3. Shea Ralph, Vanderbilt Commodores

2025-26: AP Coach of the Year | NCAA Tournament run | Program-defining season

Ralph won the 2026 AP Coach of the Year award, the first Vanderbilt head coach ever to receive the honor, and the season she put together validated every word of that recognition. She has been transforming a program that has historically underperformed relative to its academic and athletic resources, and 2025-26 was the year that transformation became impossible to ignore nationally. The AP voters don’t hand that award to programs making modest progress; Ralph built something real in Nashville this season, and the award was a reflection of genuine, sustained excellence.

2. Cori Close, UCLA Bruins

2025-26 record: 37-1 | Final Four | 2026 national champion | Beat South Carolina 79-51 in the title game

Close has been quietly building UCLA into a powerhouse for over a decade, and 2025-26 was the season where everything came together. Her Bruins went 37-1, beat Texas in the Final Four, and then delivered a dominant 79-51 dismantling of South Carolina in the national championship game to give UCLA its first NCAA women’s basketball title. She did it with a senior-laden, battle-tested roster that played its best basketball at exactly the right time. The championship transforms Close from a respected program builder into a definitively elite coach, and at this level of sustained excellence, the Bruins are not going anywhere.

1. Dawn Staley, South Carolina Gamecocks

Cori Close won the trophy, and that achievement earns her every accolade coming her way. But on the full body of work across 2025-26, Dawn Staley produced the single greatest coaching season of the year. She won the SEC, eliminated the nation’s last unbeaten team and the greatest dynasty in the sport in the Final Four, and took her program to its third consecutive national championship game. Her program has now been to four national championship games under her leadership, winning three of them, and she has built a culture in Columbia that every program in the country is trying to replicate. Close wins the title. Staley wins the coaching argument. Women’s basketball is lucky to have both.

A golden era, coached to perfection

The 2025-26 women’s college basketball season produced an all-No. 1-seed Final Four for just the fifth time in tournament history, and four coaches on this list were responsible for getting their teams there. The sport has never been better coached, never been more competitive at the top, and never had more eyes on it. The coaches on this list are the reason for all three.

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