SMU announced the addition of Adia Barnes as its new head coach early this afternoon. Shortly after, Arizona athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois issued her statement.
“On behalf of the University of Arizona community, I want to thank Adia for her nine seasons as our head coach and her profound impact on Arizona Women’s Basketball. She helped elevate our program and created lifetime memories for our student-athletes, coaches and fans. We wish Adia, Salvo, Matteo and Capri all the best in the future. Our national search for a new head coach is already underway, and I am confident that our candidate pool will be strong. We have a championship history and a proud tradition; we have incredibly passionate fans and donors who want success; we have a strong commitment to basketball excellence and championships from our university and our department; we compete in one of the nation’s top conferences; and we have an unwavering desire to be great. I look forward to welcoming our new head coach!”
The question now is who that new head coach will be.
There are some clues in how Reed-Francois has operated at both Missouri and Arizona. She likes to hire people she has hired before.
The first hire Reed-Francois made at Arizona was the swimming coach. She went to UNLV to fill that.
At Missouri, she was tasked with hiring a new volleyball coach. She turned to UNLV and took the very successful Dawn Sullivan. Sullivan has continued her success with the Tigers.
However, her other coaching hire at Arizona suggests another possibility: young, inexperienced, and relatively inexpensive. That’s the path she took with women’s golf when Laura Ianello—another Wildcat alumna who had not only challenged for a national title but won—also left Arizona for a job in the state of Texas.
That doesn’t have to be a bad thing if it’s the right individual.
Greg Byrne took a combination of these paths when he hired Barnes. She was a relatively new coach taking over a program that had fallen into bad times and had few fans. He paid her very little. In fact, she was the lowest-paid women’s basketball coach in the Pac-12 when she was hired. She always said that money would come with success.
Barnes marketed community engagement before she had on-court success to sell. She never refused to stop and talk to fans. Her program often had the most community service hours in the department during those early years. When the on-court success came just three years into her tenure, she already had a college town that was engaged with her and her program. The money didn’t come until she led the program to its first Elite Eight, Final Four, and national championship game in her fifth season.
Barnes was a special case. As a decorated alumna, many older fans remembered her. She was able to sell the fact that she “picked Arizona twice,” as she used to say.
It would be a surprise to see Reed-Francois go for a major conference head coach with a lot of success. Those coaches come with a price tag. Who is out there that might move the program in the right direction? How likely are they to want to come to Arizona?
Lindy La Rocque, head coach at UNLV
La Rocque follows the pattern of drinking from the UNLV well. Reed-Francois also has an obvious affection for her. The Arizona AD presented La Rocque with an honor for her Native American heritage when UNLV played the Wildcats on Nov. 12, 2024. It was one of the few overt public appearances Reed-Francois made with the women’s basketball team this season.
La Rocque is young but she’s a very successful and accomplished head coach. The 35-year-old was named Mountain West Coach of the Year for the third time this season.
While the Rebels’ streak of NCAA tournament bids was broken this year when they lost in the semifinals of the Mountain West Tournament, she still led her team to the postseason with a WBIT berth. UNLV fell to Florida in the second round.
It was La Rocque’s fourth straight postseason bid. The previous three were in the NCAA Tournament, although the Rebels have yet to win a game in the Big Dance under her tutelage.
She may be a Las Vegas native, but she also has Tucson ties. Her family was very close to legendary men’s head coach Lute Olson. When the Lady Rebels came to McKale Center for the first round of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament in 2023, she said that when people tried to tell her how to get around the twisting hallways of the arena, she told them she already knew.
In addition to Olson, La Rocque has ties with another legendary head coach. She played for Tara VanDerveer at Stanford from 2008-12. She also coached under the former Cardinal leader for one season before getting the head gig in Vegas.
La Rocque has said she’s staying at UNLV, but it would be remiss to leave her off the list just in case Reed-Francios could work some magic.
Kamie Ethridge, head coach at Washington State
Kamie Ethridge has always been able to get more from less. She lifted the Cougars to some of the highest points in the program’s history before the demise of the Pac-12 brought it all crashing down around her.
Ethridge doesn’t complain about that, though. She’s used to having to take commercial flights despite being in a remote area. She’s used to finding diamonds in the rough and developing them. She scours the globe looking for players and then molds them into a team. Earlier this year, she said she doesn’t have time to complain about how unfair things are or to look at what others have.
She’s had to deal with a lot of unfairness, too. While female athletes and coaches shouldn’t have to grin and bear it, Ethridge has proven that she can if she has to—and she still has the same goals even after she lost her players and they lost their conference.
As a former assistant coach at Kansas State, she also has some experience with the Big 12.
As a person, Ethridge is down-to-earth and open. She’s from Lubbock, Tex., so Tucson would be much closer to home. However, the common perception has long been that she would end up back in her home state.
Xavier Lopez, associate head coach at TCU
Xavier Lopez was by Mark Campbell’s side as the head coach of the Horned Frogs as they made their historic turnaround this season. Lopez has been with Campbell for a while, first at Oregon and then at Sacramento State. He just finished his second season in Fort Worth.
He has coached under some of the best offensive coaches in the game. Both Kelly Graves at Oregon and Campbell at TCU place a premium on scoring. It might be something that excites the fan base, many of whom were frustrated by the defensive style of Barnes. Arizona will need to find a way to keep that base, most of whom didn’t regularly attend games before she came back to Tucson.
Like some of the other successful assistants on this list, he’s currently at a school that has resources to get players. Could he be successful at Arizona if he didn’t have that level of support? Would he want to try?
Tari Cummings-Baker, associate coach and recruiting coordinator at Baylor
Tari Cummings-Baker has been on Nicki Collen’s staff for four years. She also spent time at Cincinnati and Houston so she has experience with several current Big 12 schools. She was also an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Arkansas. She spent six years there, demonstrating a willingness to stay put.
Arizona needs someone adept at recruiting, and Cummings-Baker has been successful in that arena at Baylor. She helped Collen ink the No. 9 recruiting class in 2021. The question is whether those skills will translate if the Wildcats don’t have the financial resources to compete in the NIL/revenue-sharing world of today.
Cummings-Baker has been a head coach at the Division II level, although it was a short stint that ended with a losing record. In 2021, The Athletic noted that her experience there showed that she’s able to operate with fewer resources. However, after her time at Baylor, would she want to return to that?
