Stock up: Which women’s college basketball coaches have impressed the most?

To be clear, I’m only looking at coaches who have been impressive relative to expectations. The likes of Dawn Staley and Cori Close won’t be here, not because they haven’t been superb, but because they should have already been considered among the handful of best coaches in the sport.

What we have here is mostly coaches who have been long-time stalwarts making another leap as their recruiting or approach to the transfer portal has developed, plus a first-year coach whose team has significantly outperformed expectations both on and off the court. There are plenty of coaches leading their teams to surprising success this year, but these ones are clearly more than just flashes in the pan.

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Kim Barnes Arico — Michigan

Kim Barnes Arico has somewhat quietly been one of the most impressive coaches in the sport for several years, consistently guiding teams to outperform expectations and developing fringe rotation players into consistent contributors.

This is no longer quiet, after trouncing Notre Dame in mid-November and coming within one possession of upsetting UConn, leading the Wolverines to their second-highest AP ranking ever at No. 6, and the longest streak that they’ve ever been ranked this high, per Across The Timeline. This is also the longest Michigan has been as high as No. 6 in Her Hoop Stats rating.

This is what it looks like when Barnes Arico gets five-star players, specifically sophomores Olivia Olson and Syla Swords, whose improvements have fueled this hot start. This is also what it looked like in 2021-22, when the tenures of Naz Hillmon and Leigha Brown overlapped with Laila Phelia’s freshman year.

Time will tell if Barnes Arico can bring in more five-stars and make another long-lasting leap with this program, but it’s undeniably clear that when she gets a bit of top-end talent in Ann Arbor, her teams are elite.

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Ty Grace — Howard

When Ty Grace got the Howard job in 2015, the program was coming off a 4-27 season in which it ranked 335th in HHS rating (out of 349). The team won a couple more games her first year, but still ranked 335th. And thus began the slow, unsteady program rebuild that would last the better part of a decade.

By the end of Grace’s second season, the Bison were already a consistent .500-or-better team in the MEAC, but it would take several more years for them to become a threat in the conference title race.

They earned a share of the MEAC regular season title in 2021-22, their first conference title in 20 years. They won it outright the following season (North Carolina A&T leaving the conference certainly helped that achievement), and won the MEAC tournament, leading to their first NCAA tournament appearance since 2001.

Howard has now made the conference title game in five-straight years, and recruiting has significantly improved. And this season has been another breakthrough for Grace, with non-conference wins over Fairfield and Cincinnati.

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Amy Williams — Nebraska

Since she took over in Omaha, Amy Williams’ schtick has been to play deep rotations from a roster almost entirely from in-state and the upper Midwest, with the occasional Aussie or Big Sky transfer, to finish in the 60th percentile of the Big Ten. This has been enough to sometimes grab a low-seeded at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

This year marks a strong deviation from that; the Huskers are 11-0, their second-best start since the 2009-10 team that went 32-2, and sit 11th in NET and 12th in HHS rating, the latter being the program’s highest-ever ranking this late into a season.

Credit for this improvement starts with Britt Prince, the program’s best player since Jessica Shepard, but much of it comes down to the roster management and coaching. Nebraska’s recruiting of both high schoolers and transfers now looks much more in line with its Power Four peers, and the roster fits both Williams’ approach and the established talent far better than in previous years.

The schemes she’s running have been adjusted to fit the roster better in turn, and things could look even better when Natalie Potts returns. A 2026 recruiting class of three four-star recruits, which ranks eighth nationally by 247’s composite score, suggests this might be a lasting improvement.

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Molly Miller — Arizona State

Miller has been at the helm for just a baker’s dozen games, and she has already notched as many combined Quad 1 and 2 wins as her predecessor, Natasha Adair, did in the two years prior.

A lot of this has stemmed from being a better judge of talent. While Arizona State has heavily relied upon transfers over the past several years, this is the first year that it’s relying upon an entire starting lineup of players new to the program, and yet it’s succeeding more than before. That’s an incredibly difficult feat, even if the Sun Devils’ best opponent so far only ranks No. 72 in HHS rating.

A hot start wouldn’t be enough by itself to create optimism in Arizona State’s future. But after recent years spent rarely making final lists for recruits and often losing targets to mid-majors, the Sun Devils have progressed to making four final lists in the class of 2026 since July — battles they’ve lost to Texas, Oregon and Mizzou, better company to keep than mid-majors — and secured commitment from a 2026 four-star, the program’s first top-100 recruit since 2022.

It also got a visit from Kaleena Smith, the No. 1 player in the class of 2027, and has an upcoming unofficial visit from Avery Arije, another top-20 player in that class. Time will tell if Arizona State has enough money to compete with the better programs in the Big 12, but things are already looking brighter than they have in many years.