Top 5 women's college basketball coaches on hot seat ahead of 2025-26 season ft. Kim Caldwell

The 2025-26 women's college basketball season is more than three months away and some coaches are on the hot seat due to their disappointing finishes last season.

This year's campaign is expected to be a bounce-back season for these coaches because if they don't perform to their expectations, they will get the boot.

Here are the top five women's college basketball coaches who will be in the hot seat this season.

Top 5 women's college basketball coaches on the hot seat ahead of the 2025-26 season

#5 Winston Gandy - Grand Canyon

Winston Gandy replaced Molly Miller on March 24 as the new Grand Canyon Lopes coach. He'll be bringing in a well-experienced coaching resume that had him working in the coaching staffs of Duke, Rice, Maryland and South Carolina, where he helped Dawn Staley win a national championship in 2024 and a runner-up finish last season.

Gandy will lead Grand Canyon (32-3, 16-0 in WAC last season) in their defense of the WAC regular season and tournament titles and improve on their first-round finish in the 2025 NCAA Tournament.

#4 Robin Pingeton - Wisconsin

Robin Pingeton resigned as the coach of Missouri at the end of the season, only to return as the new bench tactician of the Big Ten Conference program Wisconsin. The Badgers didn't perform well in the past four seasons under Marisa Moseley, going 47-75, including a 13-16 record last season.

Pingeton coached Missouri to a 250-218 record and reached four consecutive NCAA Tournaments from 2016 to 2019. The Tigers went a combined 79-99 over her last six seasons, forcing the veteran coach to step down.

Robin Pingeton will try to bring Wisconsin back to relevance in the Big Ten Conference and possibly guide them to the NCAA Tournament this season.

#3 Joe McKeown - Northwestern

Joe McKeown begins his last year of coaching Northwestern in November, and he'll try to make a glorious exit by leading the Wildcats to the 2026 NCAA Tournament. McKeown and her players had three straight losing seasons that never went past nine wins in each of those years.

The veteran coach hopes to end that trend and help Northwestern return to its winning form and become one of the top representatives of the Big Ten Conference.

#2 Molly Miller - Arizona State

Molly Miller replaced previous Arizona State coach Natasha Adair on March 22, and right away, expectations have gone up for Arizona State in this year's campaign. The 38-year-old Miller was 117-38 in her five seasons with the Lope,s and she hopes to bring the winning mentality to Arizona State, which went 29-62 under Adair.

The Sun Devils finished second-to-last in the Big 12 standings with a 3-15 conference record and 10-22 overall. Miller is expected to experience painstaking days of guiding Arizona State back to Big 12 Conference supremacy.

#1 Kim Caldwell - Tennessee

Tennessee had a promising season under coach Kim Caldwell, winning its first 13 games last season. However, the Volunteers went on a seven-game slump, going 2-6 in that stretch.

Caldwell and her team were able to bounce back in the next seven games, winning six of seven, including an upset victoory over eventual 2025 national champions UConn in a non-conference game on Feb. 6. Tennessee made it to the NCAA Tournament and beat South Florida and Ohio State in the first two rounds before losing to Texas in the Sweet 16.

Kim Caldwell, who finished the 2024-25 season at 24-10 (8-8 in SEC), must duplicate or improve her impressive first-year stint with Tennessee to reassure the trust of fans and the school in particular.