The 2024-25 women's college basketball regular season is behind us. All we have left are conference tournaments and then the NCAA Tournament (and all the other lesser postseason tournaments.)
But some teams aren't looking ahead to whether they're title contenders or not. Some are looking at the overall situation their team is in and assessing what they need to do to turn things around after a disappointing year — or, for the coaches below on this list, multiple disappointing years.
Here are five coaches who should be on the hot seat after the 2024-25 regular season.
Ronald Hughey - Houston
As a Houston alum, I hate to say this, because Ronald Hughey has given so many years to this university and has come close to putting it all together a few times. By all accounts, he's a great dude. It's just that he isn't the coach to make Houston into a respectable Big 12 program.
I was willing to ride with Hughey through the move into the Big 12 because the last few seasons in the American were encouraging. He deserved a chance to show if he could take an experienced Houston team and be competitive in Year 1 in the Big 12.
But two seasons into the move, Houston isn't competitive. In fact, they're arguably the worst power conference team in the country. The Coogs won just five games this year — since 2009, Houston is the only Big 12 team to finish the season with five or fewer total wins. When Houston inevitably loses in the Big 12 tournament, the team will tie for the most losses by a Big 12 team over that span.
In 11 seasons at Houston, Hughey's teams have finished over .500 just three times.
Natasha Adair - Arizona State
It's always tough to take over for a legend, which Natasha Adair has shown since taking over the Sun Devils job from Charli Turner Thorne.
Adair took over for the 2022-23 season. The conference records for the Sun Devils in that span: 1-16, 3-16, 3-15. The three conference wins this year were against Texas Tech, Houston and BYU, not exactly a murderer's row.
Arizona State could give Adair another season to turn things around, but this program is moving in the wrong direction.
Carolyn Kieger - Penn State
Last season, Penn State went a surprising 10-10 in Big Ten play, the first time since Carolyn Kieger took the job in 2019 that the team had finished .500 or better.
But that came crashing down this past season, as the Nittany Lions were just 1-17 against Big Ten foes. Looking just at conference games, Penn State ranked 16th in the conference in net rating and 17th in field goal percentage.
Kieger's first season at Penn State also saw the team go 1-17 in Big Ten play. After improvement in between, the program is back to square one. Firing Kieger after leading the team to 22 wins last season might be drastic, but it's hard to see last year's success as anything more than a one-year bump fueled by having Ashley Owusu on the roster.
Joe McKeown - Northwestern
Joe McKeown took over the Northwestern job in 2008. Since then, he's led the team to the NCAA Tournament just twice, though his best team was the 2019-20 Wildcats team that went 26-4 and could have made a run if the COVID-19 pandemic hadn't forced the cancelation of the postseason.
But here's the thing about McKeown's tenure: the Wildcats have finished over .500 in Big Ten play in just three of his 17 seasons. Sure, there are 10 seasons with an overall record better than .500, but much of that was built on non-conference play. When things mattered against other Big Ten teams, this program just hasn't consistently gotten it done.
And to bring things back to the point made when talking about Pingeton, the three seasons over .500 in Big Ten play featured either Veronica Burton or Nia Coffey, the only two Northwestern players to ever be taken in the first round of the WNBA Draft.