Felisha Legette-Jack will be the next head coach of the Syracuse Orange women's basketball team, SU Athletics announced on Saturday. She will take over immediately at Syracuse from interim Vonn Read and will be formally introduced on Monday.

Legette-Jack, a former star player with the Orange, returns after spending the last 10 years as the head coach of the Buffalo Bulls women's basketball team.

Legette-Jack has guided three Division I programs to a combined 13 winning seasons, nine postseason berths and six 20-win seasons and has a 343-279 career record. She spent the past 10 years at Buffalo building the women’s program into a contender in the Mid-American Conference. The Bulls appeared in four NCAA Tournaments and in 2018 reached the Sweet 16. She also was head coach at Hofstra and Indiana and served as an assistant at Boston College, Michigan State, and Syracuse.

As a player, she was named the 1985 BIG EAST Freshman of the Year, and earned All-Big East honors in 1986, 1987 and 1988, and helped lead the Orange to their first BIG EAST Championship and NCAA Tournament appearance in school history, according to Syracuse Athletics. She ranks fifth in all-time scoring and third in rebounds for the Orange.

This past November, she became the first woman ever at Syracuse to have her jersey retired. 

“I’m coming home! These words bring me great joy,” Legette-Jack, a Syracuse native, said in a statement. “I thank Chancellor Syverud and Director of Athletics John Wildhack for this amazing opportunity. It is a privilege and an honor to accept this position as your next head women’s basketball coach. The love that I have for our city, our university, and our athletics department cannot be measured.”

"We are thrilled to have Coach Legette-Jack lead our Women's Basketball program," Director of Athletics John Wildhack said in a statement. "She is a builder of programs, evidenced by the success she had at the University at Buffalo. She is totally committed to the full development of every student-athlete and staff member who is part of her program. On behalf of Syracuse Athletics, all our alumni and fans around the globe, we welcome Coach Legette-Jack and her family back to Syracuse University and Central New York."

She inherits a troubled program that finished the 2021-22 season at 11-18 overall and 4-14 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Read was placed in a difficult position three months before the season began. He was tabbed to replace Quentin Hillsman after his former boss resigned amid allegations by several former members of the program of bullying, threats and unwelcome physical contact.

Associate head coach since 2013, Read took over a program that was pretty much stripped bare. Eleven players transferred after the 2020-21 season and Hillsman left last August during an investigation into his coaching practices after 15 years of building the Orange into a nationally ranked program that reached the national championship game in 2016.

Meanwhile UB says the search for a new head coach has already begun. The team hopes to name it's new leader in the next three weeks.