GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Hawaii is for doing nothing. A vacation spent at a friend’s oceanfront house on Oahu’s North Shore isn’t for profound reflections or making plans. It is Kelly Rae Finley’s ritual disconnect. Her Pipeline lifeline, revisited almost every summer for the past 15 years or so. Her family is there, too, because they’re important to her, and because they have to fit in somewhere in the overstuffed calendar of a college basketball coach, and making up for lost time is a definite to-do.
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But otherwise?
Mostly nothing. A whole lot of nothing. A zone of pure contentment, letting clouds and thoughts pass by, with absolutely zero inclination to climb aboard a board and join the masses in the Pacific waters. “Come on, I’m from Minnesota,” Finley notes with a laugh, a few minutes before diving into another meeting in the Florida women’s basketball offices. “Where the heck would I learn to surf?”
Besides: Better to watch everyone else ride some pretty gnarly waves, for once.
The 2021-22 college basketball season ended with the Florida Gators participating in the women’s NCAA Tournament for the first time in six years. It’s not how most people guessed things would end six months prior, when the whole operation sagged under the resignation of a head coach and harrowing allegations by former players of mistreatment and abuse by that coach. What followed was one of the best jobs done anywhere last season, all things considered, particularly that a 36-year-old with no head coach experience led it all. A mix of emotional triage and tactical success and positivity and love executed better than anyone had any right to expect. Something that looked very much like a guidebook for modern women’s college basketball coaching, written on the fly.
Kelly Rae Finley became Florida’s permanent head coach in the middle of all of that, just two months shy of her 37th birthday, because of course she did. She earned it. She certainly earned the vacation, too. She also sits in an empty room on a summer morning and credulously declares she’d be fine if it all went the other way, if all that was left of 2021-22 was ash and she wasn’t the still-new-ish head coach. You begin to understand why everything happened how it happened. It’s as Finley tells her players: Try your best to do the next right thing. What came before has no bearing on the moment, or at least the choice to endeavor to do the moment better. So, now, the only thing on Finley’s mind is what’s ahead, which involves building something enduring where everything once crumbled.
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“In the last year, we’ve made a tremendous amount of growth,” Finley says. “Something that we’ve talked about now is, what does it look like to take the next steps?
“Who we are is not going to change. But as a person, you always want to be yourself, and be yourself with more skill. Doesn’t matter your age, doesn’t matter your background, doesn’t matter your experiences. You always want to be striving to continue to grow. That’s a huge part of who we are. We want to do things with joy, we want to do things with an intensity, we want to have high expectations. We want to know we can do hard things.”
Her arrival, and the means by which she arrived, has some notes of preordination.
Her father, Ray, won 472 games and three state championships over 23 years as a high school girls basketball coach in Minnesota. His daughter, meanwhile, was the first-grader who hand-wrote a letter about how proud she was to be a water girl, because she got to sit on the bench and be a part of the team. Finley eventually grew into a two-time all-state guard at The Breck School in suburban Minneapolis, signing with Northwestern and playing in 13 games as a freshman before an undetected stress fracture turned into a broken leg and ended her season. “I tried my hardest, and did my best, and trained hard every day, and that’s why I broke my leg,” she says with a laugh. “I was stubborn.” She transferred to Colorado State, where she logged 540 minutes in 44 games and left with no particular inclination to pursue a long professional playing career. Then the path ahead crystallized a trip to Boston to see her brother, Joe, play hockey.
Kathy Delaney-Smith, Harvard’s former longtime head coach, recruited Finley out of high school and, to this day, regrets a gig with Team USA in Croatia that hindered the efforts. Finley heard good things about the Crimson’s roster for the 2008-09 season and thought, hey, why not stop by and kill time by watching a practice and reconnecting. So she emailed Delaney-Smith. Within 15 minutes, Delaney-Smith replied, asking Finley how she knew about the job posting.
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“I’m like, ‘What job posting?’” Finley recalls.
The visit turned into an interview. “About 10 minutes in,” Delaney-Smith says now, “I knew this woman was special.” Finley received the offer: volunteer assistant coach. A non-paying gig. Gobsmacked, Finley called her father with the news, wondering what in the world to do with it.
“Tell her you’re staying,” Ray Finley replied. “I’ll ship you your stuff.”
By Finley’s second or third year on staff, Delaney-Smith was fending off programs aiming to poach her recruiting coordinator. The combination of Finley’s confidence, drive and willingness to absorb information made her, in Delaney-Smith’s estimation, a natural at a job Finley wasn’t always sure she wanted to do. Though sometimes the performance evaluations got a little hairy. “She works so hard, she wants to do everything really, really well, so that would upset her,” Delaney-Smith says. “But she’s so driven, she just got better. Or she may have agreed to disagree with me, I’m not sure. But she was the consummate learner.”
As Harvard became an immersion course in, as Finley puts it now, “everything that’s right about coaching,” she decided to pursue the creation of that vibe at the highest levels. Her ensuing coaching stops all provided something different, another piece slid into place: an introduction to power-league hoops and the preparation and organization it requires at Colorado; watching Adia Barnes navigate the challenges of being a first-time power conference coach at Arizona; even becoming an associate head coach at Florida amped up the responsibility level. But those four Harvard years were elemental. They reinforced something Finley had known ever since she was 5 years old, and her sister, Brooke, came into the world. Brooke is special-needs, non-verbal with no fine motor skills in her hands. Finley rode along to the doctor’s appointments and to speech therapy. She learned patience, feeding Brooke when their parents needed some assistance. She came to see a voice as a gift. “I learned it’s not all about me, because of her, at a really young age,” Finley says. While Finley worked paycheck-free at Harvard, she earned money by nannying for families with special-needs children, building a bond with a girl named Abigail, who passed away at age 10. Finley considers Abigail’s family to be her extended family to this day.
“We look at our problems and sometimes think they’re so big,” Finley says. “When you hold somebody’s hand who’s 10 years old as they take their last breath, and your best friend is their mom, and they’re having to make tough decisions? Yeah, it’s OK, guys. Life is pretty good. Perspective.”
As a guidelight for bringing Florida out of the dark over the last year, you could do worse.
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In short: Former coach Cam Newbauer resigned in July 2021, weeks after signing a contract extension. In late September, a story published by the Independent Florida Alligator revealed accusations of verbal and physical abuse by Newbauer, with multiple former players detailing their experiences. This sort of behavior and upheaval doesn’t leave scars. It leaves open wounds. Even Finley herself was reported to be one of the victims. The report also included allegations that Finley didn’t do enough to stanch Newbauer’s conduct as associate head coach, though current Gators strongly defended her in the aftermath. This part of the whole story, Finley politely but firmly declines to discuss. “That was a personal experience with our team,” she says. “That’s not something we’re going to go back and rehash. We’re moving forward.” It is reasonable to surmise that being a healer was a significant part of Finley’s new job description. On-floor results were arguably less of a priority than establishing a restorative culture; given that the Gators hadn’t finished above .500 in any of the prior five seasons, wins likely weren’t expected anyway.
“That’s her thing — she builds strong relationships so you know you’re safe and somebody is going to look out for you,” senior guard Nina Rickards says. “That’s what she instills in our program. We all trust her.”
The results mostly as an interim head coach — 21 victories, the program’s most since 2015-16, including a 10-6 record in the SEC — tell the tale. It was achieved by pouring into the players in a way Finley always had — she was the lead recruiter for most of the roster in the first place — but it all felt like someone threw back the curtains and opened the windows to let some fresh air into the space.
Finley’s core program principles — honesty, respect and love — are not particularly complicated. “Lying — absolutely not,” junior forward Jordyn Merritt says. “We don’t do that. Just be honest and go out there and have fun. And have love. She loves love.” But this wasn’t basketball Valhalla, in a flash. In fact, Florida lost two of its first three games last season — including a 17-point blowout by Towson, which wound up winning 24 games but is nevertheless a Colonial Athletic Conference program — and dropped its first two SEC contests, too.
Still, without the trust, without a sense of renewed mutual belief, Florida doesn’t absorb those two league losses and subsequently travel to Texas A&M and battle through two overtimes to secure its first-ever win in College Station. You’re tired, they’re tired, Finley told her team between overtimes. You’re exhausted, they’re exhausted. But you guys have been working for this. This is when you show them you’ve prepared for the moment.
On the one hand: What else would a coach say? On the other hand: What says the players have to believe her? Past that night, Florida lost only two more games in the regular season: to No. 1 South Carolina, the eventual national champion, and at No. 11 LSU. Overall, the Gators were a vastly improved defensive team (a defensive rating of 87.2, per HerHoopStats, versus 96.3 the year previous) which compensated for an offense that ranked in the 53rd percentile nationally with .790 points per possession, per Synergy Sports. “She literally claps, snaps, anything — look each other in the eye, this is all you got, this is all you need, go take care of it,” Merritt says. “That’s enough for us to know we can lean on our team, our family.”
It’s a deft balance of demand and empathy, which reads a lot like the preferred way to coach players of this generation and generations to come. Not the only way. But maybe the better way. Hug before you push, so to speak. When asked, it’s the first example Finley gives of how she demonstrates love: hold players accountable, she says. “When you come from a place of seeking to understand, you can meet somebody where they are, and you can move forward together better,” Finley says. “To me, that’s love. You’re not always going to see eye to eye, but you’re not always not going to see eye to eye, either, right? It goes two ways. It’s a common understanding of the mission you’re on and what you’re trying to accomplish. Here, we’re trying to individually be ourselves, and do it with a little more skill. And collectively it’s going to make us that much more powerful.”
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And, Finley insists, it won’t change.
Drop by Florida’s athletics facility on the second day of Summer B workouts, and the head coach gathers the first practice group for a debrief after a practice. Her voice doesn’t carom off the walls, but her message is clear enough; she wants the players to retrain their minds, she says, as the ramp-up to 2022-23 begins. For instance, she reminds them, there’s no walking on the floor. “We get in, we get our stuff done, we get out,” Finley says, a quiet but unmistakable bit of standard-setting that then flows into the head coach asking her players for examples of what the group did well in the previous hour. “She’s very transparent,” Rickards says. “A lot of coaches are going to hype you up and talk to you and tell you things that they want you to think is going to happen. But Kelly is honest. She’s 100 percent. She just keeps it real.”
As everyone walks off the floor, Finley approaches Merritt to offer a quick thought. “You had a good day today,” Finley says.
Merritt has been a starter since late in her freshman year. She was the Gators’ third-leading scorer in 2021-22. She’s not the type of player, in theory, who needs affirmation. That’s also not the point, either. “It shows you how much she cares about all of us, and how much she pays attention to the little things,” Merritt says a few minutes later. “You might see that from assistant coaches, if that. But coming from a head coach? It just makes you want to keep giving your best effort all the time.”
The second session is more of the same. Florida’s players dive into a close-out drill, with specific coaching points for hand placement and foot placement and depth of distance between the defender and offensive player … and then Finley infuses a little pressure-release into the instruction. “I don’t care how you get the job done,” she tells the team, “just get the job done.” Over the hour, Finley asks a lot of questions, coaching her team almost Socratically, a big believer in the idea that players truly understand when they can explain everything on their own. “What I’ve found is, nobody likes to be talked at, right?” Finley says later. After one of the veteran Gators tries to help another player grasp a concept by telling the player all the things she shouldn’t be doing, Finley pulls the veteran aside and offers one gentle thought: Think about what you want her to do, not what you don’t want her to do.
“I’m not perfect, none of us are, we expect grace in moments when we make a mistake,” Finley says later. “But we all need to try to speak what we want to happen.”
The workout ends, and the group huddles up, and Finley is at it again, drawing out some morsel of confidence-building material from the participants. Leah, what’s one thing we did well today? Paige, what’s one thing you did well? She then issues a directive to review the drills with teammates, to better set up the individual and the team for success, and mostly to ensure everyone has each other’s backs. “If she’s struggling and can’t think for herself, are you going to let her fail?” Finley asks the group — rhetorically, of course. “No, we’re not going to do that.”
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Florida women’s basketball desperately needed this approach after a disastrously toxic period. Whether it is more than a temporary salve is now the focus.
The hazards are real when a 30-something first-time head coach navigates treacherous waters like the SEC. Finley and her staff have the right idea philosophically, aiming to play with pace through the center of the floor while sharing the ball in the halfcourt. It’ll be an attractive style, if they can get it right after the so-so showing on that end last season. To that end, the staff backstopped its 2022-23 roster with a raft of proven transfers, which is maybe inevitable when the endgame is rooted in immediacy: Do better than a first-round exit from the NCAA Tournament. There’s a reason, after all, that the Gators have team workout shirts bearing the word “Unsatisfied.” “Oh, there’s a lot of unfinished business,” Rickards says.
Maintaining upward mobility and making regular appearances in top 25 polls probably requires more proof of concept on the floor this winter, in a league likely to place at least three teams in the top 15 of most preseason polls. And, naturally, the commitments from multiple top 100 prospects must flow in annually. These are inescapably symbiotic. Build it and they’ll come, and all that, which her mentor expects will occur. “She’s a salesperson,” Delaney-Smith says. “She could sell you a rock. She’s tall, she’s confident, she’s funny as heck. People like Kelly. She can rope you in in 10 seconds. She’s really good.”
It’s still a lot, because in the end, it’s Kelly Rae Finley striving to breathe into existence the vision she had all those years ago at Harvard. The best way to do college basketball, done big. That is her next right thing to do.
That is a lot, if you let it be. “When we seek growth and we seek to do our best, then whatever the results may be, we’re good with,” Finley says. “At the end of the day, if the worst problem I have is that we lose a game, I’m gonna be all right.”
A few hours after those two summer workouts are in the books, Finley hops on a private jet with new men’s coach Todd Golden and other athletic department staffers, bound for an appearance before the Gator Club of Miami. Finley jokes on the way down that she’ll just introduce Golden and walk off stage, preferring to let him do all the hard work.
But when her turn comes to lead off, she grabs the mic and starts to talk about her program, and how she never wants her players to feel second-to or less-than, and how the lessons the team learned in the previous nine months were so cool to see. Florida’s women’s basketball coach is in her element and in command. Doing hard things, Kelly Rae Finley tells her audience, can be really, really fun.
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(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; Photos: Matthew Maxey / Getty Images, Sean Elliot / Getty Images)
