About halfway through the NCAA regular season conference schedules, several coaches are starting to emerge as attractive candidates for future openings in the women’s basketball world. On Tuesday, we put together a list of five coaches that we think could be on the hot seat (or worse) at this point in the year. So it’s only right that we also highlight a group that’s on the way up and in line to revitalize a few programs in the future.

There are some great candidates that you probably know about, from Richmond’s Aaron Rousell to Fairfield’s Carly Thibault-DuDonis, so we decided to introduce you to five coaches you might know be familiar with yet but should be.

We’ll have some corresponding videos on our YouTube channel (which you can check out here) and as always, be sure to subscribe to our free daily newsletter by clicking the button below!

Editor’s Note: While there are several great candidates that are assistant coaches at major schools or high level head coaches at other levels, we are listing five current head coaches in NCAA women’s basketball.

It was a little surprising to see Guzzardo’s step up from Southeast Louisiana be a seemingly lateral move in the Soutland, but the constant of her success hasn’t changed a bit. After winning the SLC twice in the last five years — while earning Coach of the Year honors in 2023 and 2025 — McNeese plucked the Lady Lions head coach for their vacant job. Now, the Cowgirls are just a couple wins this week away from taking a commanding lead for the Southland title race.

While she played her college ball in Akron and started her coaching career up in the MAC, Guzzardo is a dyed-in-the-wool Louisiana hooper. She grew up in Hammond (the home of women’s basketball royalty in Robin Roberts and Kim Mulkey). Maybe SEC schools wanted to see her in one more job before giving her the reins but it feels like, given what she’s doing at McNeese, that Guzzardo is ready for a bigger stage.

Lindsay Edmonds came off Wes Moore’s coaching tree after eight years at NC State and took over a Rice program that was on solid footing. Tina Langley had just led the Owls to a WNIT title before heading to Washington while Edmonds was arriving after an extremely successful stint in Raleigh. In her fifth year, the machine has been fully built and is dominating the AAC.

It’s a group effort this year but Rice is 17-3 overall and 7-0 in conference play at the halfway mark. For the last couple of years, Edmonds has had her team ready for the AAC Tournament, making the championship in each of the last two seasons, but they hadn’t mastered regular season play. This time around, that problems looks to have been figured out and the Owls are favorites to sweep both titles this year. Look for her as a top candidate for any open ACC job.

Fresh off George Mason’s first ever A-10 championship and NCAA Tournament appearance, Vanessa Blair-Lewis has the Patriots atop the conference standings with a month left to play. Considering this is a league with Rhode Island, Richmond and Davidson, that’s quite the accomplishment. Since her arrival from Bethune-Cookman, where she also made program history, Blair-Lewis has built GMU every year into a standard bearer program. The added success in the MEAC (and the NEC, at Mount St. Mary’s) speaks to a coach that is winning everywhere she goes.

While she doesn’t have a binding location in the way Edmonds and Guzzardo seem to, it wouldn’t surprise me if we see her name on a multitude of ACC, SEC or Big East jobs should they come available.

Tammi Reiis has been quietly cooking at Rhode Island for years now. The only thing they’d been missing is regular NCAA Tournament appearances and, on some level, you could chalk some of that up to a gauntlet of an A-10 bracket every March. But the Rams feel like they have the juice to get over that hump and sweep the A-10 titles for the first time in program history.

Back in 2022-2023, Reiss set a program record for single season wins (26) and won the A-10 regular season title for the first time in Rhody history. She was an assistant under Quentin Hillsman at Syracuse which, while semi-controversial due to Hillsman’s alleged transgressions, shouldn’t reflect on Reiss especially after the amount of time she’s put in. There’s also some west coast stops at San Diego State and Cal State Fullerton so there’s a lot of places that could find her resume appealing.

One of the more underrated coaches in mid-major basketball, Banbury is seven years into career at High Point and is, more or less, running the Big South Conference. Since 2020, the Panthers have won the Big South three times and made the NCAA Tournament twice while compiling a 73-18 record in league play. Sitting at 18-2 and undefeated this year, it may be safe to say HPU is going to repeat.

Banbury spent her formative years under Karl Smesko at Florida Gulf Coast and, given her mentors success in the WNBA, may be a name that will fly around some search firms this spring. Interestingly, Banbury is a Fort Collins, Colorado native but is really rooted in Florida and North Carolina.

Who is your favorite up and coming head coaching candidate in women’s college basketball? Let us know in the comments and subscribe to our free daily newsletter for the best women’s hoops news in your inbox!