Spring is often referred to as the season of change, and there has been a significant amount of change within the University of Rhode Island’s women’s basketball program.
After falling in the first round to the University of Alabama in the program’s second-ever March Madness appearance, it was announced on March 23 that head coach Tammi Reiss would step down after seven seasons to fill a vacancy at the University of Florida.
Six days later, University at Albany Head Coach Colleen Mullen was announced as the new head coach of the Rams to succeed Reiss.
For this much change to happen, programs usually go through a period of extreme success or disappointment, and for the Rams this past season, it was the former, though even that feels like an understatement.
URI had 28 wins this season, the most in program history, including a 17-game winning streak, the longest in program history. The biggest win of the regular season was on Nov. 23, 2025, when Rhody traveled to take on No. 16-ranked North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C.
The Rams picked up the program’s second-ever win over a ranked opponent, both under Reiss, with a 68-63 win. This was the highest-ranked opponent that Rhody had beaten, and the first that URI had beaten on the road.
URI entered conference play with a 9-2 record and a winning streak of four games. The Rams would go on to win the next 13 games, including a 73-61 win over the University of Richmond, which was projected to finish first in the Atlantic 10 Conference in the preseason poll, and a 79-63 win over George Mason University on Valentine’s Day.
The program-record streak was snapped on Feb. 18, when Rhody suffered a 63-59 road loss to La Salle University, in which the Rams allowed a 17-4 run to the Explorers in the fourth quarter that snatched away a lead from Rhody they couldn’t recover.
URI finished its final four games of the season with a 2-2 record, the same number of losses they had all season before this stretch, but a 72-48 win over George Washington University on Feb. 28 clinched a share of the program’s second-ever A-10 Regular Season Championship and the No. 1 seed heading into the Atlantic 10 Tournament.
Before the tournament, the A-10 announced its annual awards and conference teams. The Rams earned eight honors. Reiss won her third A-10 Coach of the Year award, and first-year guard Vanessa Harris won the Sixth Woman of the Year award and All-Rookie honors.
Fourth-year guard Brooklyn Gray was named to the All-Conference First Team, third-year guard Sophia Vital earned a spot on the All-Conference Second Team, second-year forward Palmire Mbu was named to the All-Conference Third Team and fourth-year guard Ines Debroise became the first Ram to be named to the All-Defensive Team.
The Rams won three games in three days at the Atlantic 10 Tournament to clinch the program’s first-ever Atlantic 10 Tournament Championship. Second-year Albina Syla was named as the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, while Vital and Gray, along with Syla, were named to the All-Tournament Team.
“If I got fired tomorrow, I [couldn’t] care less,” Reiss said following the team’s Atlantic 10 Tournament win. “All I wanted was these student athletes to feel what it felt like for confetti to come down and achieve their last goal. I swear I was going to sell my soul to the Devil to make that happen.”
Unfortunately for the Rams, 13 days of rest weren’t enough, as they fell to Alabama in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, 68-55, on March 21.
The Rams will look to see if they can sustain this success with someone new at the helm as roster retention and new additions become the biggest question mark in Kingston.
