Arizona State fired women’s basketball coach Natasha Adair after a disappointing three-year tenure. (Photo by Emma Jeanson/Cronkite News)
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Natasha Adair is no longer the coach of the Arizona State women’s basketball team.
Adair was fired by ASU athletic director Graham Rossini, the school announced Saturday. The decision came after the Sun Devils’ 96-88 loss to Iowa State Thursday in the second round of the 2025 Phillips 66 Big 12 Women’s Basketball Championship.
“We appreciate coach Natasha Adair’s leadership and professionalism in guiding Sun Devil women’s basketball over the past three seasons,” Rossini said in a statement. “ She and her staff built meaningful connections throughout the Valley, and we respect how she represented ASU during her time in Tempe. A national search for the next leader of our program will begin immediately.”
The loss to the Cyclones was a devastating end to ASU’s 10-22 season. In their first year in the Big 12 Conference, the Sun Devils only managed to win three conference games.
In her three seasons at ASU, Adair went a combined 29-62. In conference play, she posted an abysmal 7-47 record. During her first season, the Sun Devils finished last in the Pac-12 conference. In the 2023-24 season, they finished second to last in 11th place. This year, the Sun Devils’ first in the Big 12 conference, they finished 15th out of 16 teams.
Adair faced a tough task from the start. She was brought to Tempe to help the program recover after the retirement of its winningest coach, Charli Turner Thorne. When Tuner Thorne elected to step down, she indicated a desire for then-assistant coach Nikki Blue to fill the position. Instead, then-athletic director Ray Anderson chose Adair, bringing her to the desert from the CAA’s University of Delaware.
To make the cross-country move, ASU offered Adair a five-year contract worth $625,000 annually. However, the terms also included a $25,000 increase every year.
Adair’s last season at Delaware in 2021-22 marked the only time she made the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament as a head coach. Adair brought ASU transfer Tyi Skinner with her, who made the most of her new environment in Tempe. Despite missing the entire 2023-24 season, the graduate guard returned to her previous caliber of play this year, winning her second all-conference honorable mention as a Sun Devils player in the Big 12.
Junior guard Jalyn Brown is another transfer who helped define Adair’s time with the program. In her second season in Tempe, Brown also picked up her second all-conference honorable mention.
Despite the talent Adair managed to recruit from the portal, the Sun Devils were plagued by the injury bug in each of Adair’s three years. Thursday, they were without guards Jazion Jackson and Kennedy Fauntleroy, both of whom have started at least 10 games this season.
Graduate forward Maggie Besselink has also missed considerable time in the last three years, playing in just 24 out of a possible 89 games under Adair.
In their final games of the season, ASU was limited to just eight healthy players, while several would-be starters were relegated to the bench due to injury.
Overall, her head coaching record sits at 196-205 after a disappointing three-year stint in Tempe. Although things didn’t always go her way when it came to roster availability, Rossini deemed that her team’s performance simply wasn’t good enough and felt it was time to make a change.
