GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Florida Gators sent an assistant coach to ASA College in New York four years ago for a scouting assignment. We'll call the prospect "Player A." On this particular day, the team wasn't playing particularly well — actually, they were really bad — and all the attention quickly turned to a "Player B."
Her name was Kiara Smith, a guard from Maryland, and she was livid with the way her teammates were executing that day. Make that not executing.
"It was sloppy and I was getting frustrated," Smith recalled. "We were at a point in the season when there was a lot of arguing within the team, with certain players not liking each other, not passing each other the ball."
So Smith told her coach they were done scrimmaging. They could do shooting drills, work on passing or ball-handling, they could even run. They just weren't doing 5-on-5 anymore. Done.
From the sidelines, Kelly Rae Finley took it all in.
"I'm telling my coach we need to cut off practice, not realizing there's a college coach over there," Smith said. "I was like, 'Oh snap!' But then I found out she liked it."
Yeah, she did. Finley liked the fire and the feistiness, and told Smith so. They made an immediate connection. So much, in fact, Smith committed to the Gators before taking her official visit and over the last three seasons has grown and matured not just into a leader on and off the floor, but an All-Southeastern Conference-caliber combo guard heading into her final college season.
Finley, meanwhile, has taken delight in watching an evolution that dates to that somewhat chaotic day in that JuCo gym.
"I think a strength of mine is giving them the space and genuinely investing in every relationship with each person. They're all different in their own way," Finley said. "That's one thing we're going to hang our hat on is how we celebrate the uniqueness of the individual within the context of our team. Players innately want to be great. Our job is to pull that out of them."
In Finley's case, that is now just a fraction of her job after Cameron Newbauer stepped down as UF head coach July 16 citing personal reasons. Finley, who came to Florida as an assistant with Newbauer in the spring of 2017 and two years later was promoted to associate head coach, was tabbed as interim head coach by Athletic Director Scott Stricklin and will ferry the Gators through the 2021-22 season.
So not much has changed other than her title.
"They're already used to hearing my voice," Finley said.
They heard a soothing and settling version of it in the aftermath of the Newbauer announcement, then it was back to work. For everybody. On the floor. In the weight room.
As their head coach, Finley says she'll operate with grace, while emphasizing three things she tries to live by: honesty, respect and love. That's how's she's tried to do it 13 years as an assistant. That's how she tried to do it in her three-game acting coach stint, when the Gators went 1-2, with a win in her debut at Ole Miss. No reason to change now.
As for the big-picture objectives this season, they haven't changed, either. The expectations will be the same, relative to how the players go about their business, and probably more optimistic given this will be the deepest and most talented UF women's basketball team — junior forward Lavender Brings (second-team All-SEC) averaged 19.5 points and 6.5 rebounds; Smith averaged 18.8 points, 6.7 rebounds and led the team with 95 assists — in recent years. Some players toyed with the transfer portal in the wake of the Newbauer development, but each decided to return to a team that went 12-14 overall and just 3-11 in league play.
"It was kind of a strange experience, but things like this happen other places. We're not the first to go through something like this," junior guard Nina Rickards said. "We stuck together as a team and the family that we are. We got through it, we're going to move on from it, and we're going to have a good season. That's what I'm looking forward to."
Added Smith: "Honestly, we're at a point where it's not like it's that different. We've all been around each other, we know how each other plays, we know how Kelly coaches. We just need to keep focused on the goals ahead; to win more games, to get to the [NCAA] Tournament; getting it done and playing for each other."
It was tough-love encouragement, but Finley took the words to heart.
"I wasn't a great player, but I was a damn good teammate and a really good leader," she said. "Those will always be the things I'm most proud of. They'll always matter more than anything."
Finley broke her leg at Northwestern and eventually transferred to Colorado State, where she played out her eligibility and graduated with a Human Development and Family Studies degree.
Once out of school, and contemplating her next path, she planned a trip to Boston to watch her brother, a collegiate hockey player. She emailed longtime Harvard women's basketball coach and Ivy League icon Kathy Delaney-Smith, who had recruited her out of Minnesota, to ask if she could stop by and say hello.
The visit netted Finley an unpaid volunteer assistant coach position in Cambridge.
"I'd never even considered that I would go into coaching," she said.
In 2016, it was off to Arizona. In '17, she came east to be part of Newbauer's first staff at Florida. In '21, due to unforeseen circumstance, Finley bypassed the conventional path to a head-coaching spot and now is overseeing a Power Five conference program.
Life comes at you fast sometimes. The stronger the relationships around you, the more prepared you are. On that front, Finley and the Gators had a head start.
"I feel like coaching nowadays is really people management," Finley said. "We're all going to have to work through this together and the only thing that's going to solve this is time. I wouldn't call what happened weird. It just happened and now it's a new responsibility … and a really cool one."
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