PHOENIX – On Thursday, the Associated Press announced that Vanderbilt women’s basketball head coach Shea Ralph has been named the 2025-26 AP Coach of the Year.
Ralph becomes the first Vanderbilt head coach to win the AP Coach of the Year award. She is the second Commodore coach to win a national coach of the year honor, as Jim Foster was named the United States Basketball Writers Association National Coach of the Year in 1992-93.
The AP Coach of the Year honor gives Ralph a clean sweep of all the major national coach of the year awards for the 2025-26 campaign. She also earned the distinction from the WBCA and the USBWA, while she was also selected as the 2026 Werner Ladder Naismith Women’s Coach of the Year. In total, the Vanderbilt head coach has been named coach of the year from seven different national outlets during the 2025-26 campaign.
In her fifth season at the helm in the Music City, Ralph took a Vanderbilt team that returned just one starter from a season ago and led the Commodores to their most successful regular season in school history. She guided Vandy to the Sweet 16 for the first time in 17 seasons. Vanderbilt posted a 29-5 overall record in 2025-26, while the Dores went 13-3 in SEC games.
Vandy’s 29 wins are the third-most in program history, while the 13 SEC victories set the school record for the most conference victories in a season. The Dores earned a No. 2 seed in the 2026 NCAA Tournament and hosted March Madness games in Memorial Gymnasium for the first time since the 2011-12 campaign. The Dores concluded the SEC regular season tied for second place, matching the best conference finish in program history.
Ralph led Vanderbilt to a top-five ranking in both the AP top 25 and the USA Today/WBCA coaches poll for the first time since the 2001-02 season. The Commodores spent five weeks inside the top five, while Vanderbilt was ranked in the top 10 in both polls for 12 consecutive weeks.
Ralph developed the nation’s best backcourt this season. Sophomore guard Mikayla Blakes was named the 2025-26 SEC Player of the Year, while she has been named a first-team All-American by numerous publications, and first-year point guard Aubrey Galvan was selected as SEC Freshman of the Year.
Vanderbilt went a perfect 18-0 at Memorial Gymnasium in 2025-26, marking the first time in program history that the Commodores went undefeated at home in a season. The Commodores opened the 2025-26 campaign by winning a school-record 20-straight games. Vanderbilt posted seven wins against ranked foes this season, the most in a regular season since 1995-96.
The Anchored for Her Campaign
Vanderbilt launched the Anchored for Her campaign to honor its pioneering female student-athletes and cement the university’s place as the premier destination for women’s sports ahead of next year’s 50th anniversary of its varsity women’s teams. Bolstered by lead gifts from Vanderbilt Board of Trust members Nina Kohler and Kathleen Justice-Moore, JD’91, Anchored for Her’s initial $50 million goal will fuel investment in sustainable success for a new era of collegiate athletics through facility enhancements, endowed scholarships, coaching and staff positions, capital support and naming opportunities, team-specific Excellence Funds, the Women’s Athletics General Fund and the Competitive Excellence Fund.
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