Kristy Curry is leaving the SEC.
Curry — who has been the head coach of the women’s basketball team at Alabama for 13 years — has been hired by South Florida, the school announced on Tuesday evening. Three people familiar with the hire told USA TODAY Sports that Curry’s deal with the Bulls is for five years.
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“Kristy is a proven winner at the highest levels, with head coaching success across the Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC,” USF CEO of athletics Rob Higgins said in a statement. “I’m incredibly excited about the future of South Florida women’s basketball under her leadership.”
Last week, Curry told Alabama radio station Tide 100.9 that she hadn’t “heard from another school,” and she was “focused on recruiting and X’s and O’s every day.”
“It’s that time of year,” Curry said. “But I love Alabama and love what we’ve built here.”
On Tuesday afternoon, a day after the No. 6 Tide lost to No. 3 Louisville 69-68 in the NCAA Tournament, Curry informed Alabama players of her decision to depart Tuscaloosa for Tampa.
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At USF, Curry will succeed Michele Woods-Baxter, who was the head coach for one season on an interim basis, going 20-12 and 13-5 in the American Conference. Previously USF had been coached by Jose Fernandez, who turned the Bulls into one of the sport’s signature mid-major powers before accepting a head coaching job with the WNBA’s Dallas Wings in October.
Under Fernandez, who coached the Bulls from 2000 through 2025, USF won 485 games and went to nine of the past 12 NCAA Tournaments. The Bulls won three conference titles under Fernandez and the 2009 WNIT championship. They advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament five times.
USF announced on March 13 that it was declining a bid to the WBIT and conducting a national search for its next women’s basketball coach. According to people familiar with the search, the Bulls took some big swings. They called Carly Thibault-DuDonis at Fairfield, talked with Arkansas State’s Destinee Rogers and Vermont’s Alisa Kresge, and also targeted Rice coach Lindsay Edmonds. People familiar with the search told USA TODAY Sports that the Bulls were offering a head coaching salary in the ballpark of $800,000, a pool of $700,000 for assistants and staff, and about $800,000 in revenue sharing resources for roster construction.
Curry received a contract extension at Alabama last year through 2030 and the reworked deal also increased her salary to $700,000. It’s still unclear how much she’ll be making at USF.
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“A strong foundation is in place, and I look forward to building on it as we pursue conference championships and NCAA Tournament success,” Curry said in a statement. “Rob and the University’s commitment to competing at the highest level — along with the clear vision and alignment at USF — are truly exceptional.”
The 59-year-old head coach leaves Alabama after guiding the Crimson Tide to their fifth NCAA Tournament appearance in the past six seasons. In each of the past three seasons, Alabama has won its first-round game, but fell in the second round.
USF will be the fourth Division I program that Curry has been the head coach of. She’s a native of Louisiana who got her coaching start at the high school level before becoming an assistant at Tulane in 1992 under Candi Harvey. She then coached at Stephen F. Austin under Joe Curl, Texas A&M under Harvey, and then at Louisiana Tech under Hall of Famer Leon Barmore.
In 1999, Curry was hired as the head coach at Purdue, succeeding Carolyn Peck — who had just led the Boilermakers to their only national championship. Peck left to become the head coach of the now-defunct WNBA franchise in Orlando, Florida, and Curry enjoyed a lot of success leading the Boilermakers. Under her watch, Purdue won three Big Ten Tournaments, two regular season titles, and went to the NCAA Tournament in each of her seven years at the helm, highlighted by a Final Four trip in 2001.
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Curry left Purdue for Texas Tech in 2006, but didn’t have the same sort of success, making just two NCAA Tournaments in seven seasons. In 2013, she left Lubbock, Texas, for Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to lead the Tide in the SEC. The first few years were a struggle, but Curry and the Tide finally snapped their 22-year NCAA Tournament drought in 2021 and defeated North Carolina in the first round.
Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne sat courtside at the SEC Tournament in Greenville, South Carolina, earlier this month as he watched Curry coach the Tide to a pair of victories and quarterfinal appearance. Now, he’ll have to hire a women’s basketball coach for the first time in his tenure.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: USF hires women’s basketball coach Kristy Curry away from Alabama
