Washington State extends basketball coaches Ethridge, Riley

Washington State announced one-year extensions for both basketball coaches on Tuesday.

The Cougars extended the contracts of women’s basketball coach Kamie Ethridge and men’s basketball coach David Riley by one year, through the 2030-31 season.

Ethridge has coached WSU women’s basketball since 2018. Riley is in his first season in Pullman.

In six seasons, Ethridge has led WSU to three straight NCAA Tournament appearances from 2021-23 and saw the Cougars advance to the semifinals of the inaugural Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament in 2024.

“It’s just really a no-brainer for me. I love being here. I love who I work with and for, I love the kids that we’ve been able to recruit, I think we have an opportunity to continue to get better and be a better team next year,” Ethridge said. “You hope that you’re doing your part and making people feel good about this university and I think our team is doing that.”

In 2023, Ethridge’s Cougs ran the table in Las Vegas and won the Pac-12 Conference Tournament championship. The Cougs also won a program-record 23 games that year and Ethridge was named National Coach of the Year by The Athletic.

Ethridge has used her international recruiting prowess to attract players from New Zealand, Estonia, Rwanda and beyond to the Palouse.

She recruited program leaders Charlisse Leger-Walker and Bella Murekatete, who each hold multiple program records and rank high on various other statistical leaderboards.

In 2024-25, with five All-West Coast Conference players on the roster — including senior Tara Wallack, sophomore Eleonora Villa and junior Astera Tuhina — WSU finished 19-12 overall and 14-6 in WCC play.

The WSU women earned a third seed in the West Coast Conference championships and will start in the quarterfinals at 2 p.m. Sunday.

Ethridge was previously head coach at Northern Colorado and a long-time assistant at Kansas State. She played basketball at University of Texas, where she won a national championship. Ethridge won a gold medal as part of Team USA in the 1988 Olympics and in 2002 was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

Riley, a two-time Big Sky Coach of the Year, accepted the WSU men’s basketball job almost a year ago after Kyle Smith left Pullman for Stanford.

After spending most of his adult life as a player or coach at Eastern Washington, including the prior three years as head coach, Riley took the helm of WSU, bringing many of his assistants and four players with him from Cheney to Pullman.

With just two Cougs from the previous year’s NCAA Tournament team on the roster (Isaiah Watts and Parker Gerrits), Riley rebuilt the WSU men through the transfer portal and convinced Lapwai High School’s Kase Wynott to choose WSU over Utah State and Washington.

In Year 1, Riley’s Cougars started strong out of the gate with a 13-3 record, before injuries to star players Cedric Coward and Watts saw the team drop 10 of its final 15 contests to slip to 18-13 overall.

The Cougs’ 8-10 conference record was good for sixth place and a bye to Day 3 of the conference tournament. The Cougar men will play at 8:30 p.m. Saturday.

“I’m really excited for the future here at Washington State,” Riley said. “To see the growth and the overall support that we’re gonna have going forward and going into this new conference — it’s right up there with every other conference in the country, this new Pac-12 — honored be a part of this university and this program and excited to see what’s next.”

Taylor can be reached at 208-848-2268, staylor@lmtribune.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @Sam_C_Taylor.