UCF rewards coach with contract

UCF Women's Basketball head coach Joi Williams signed a new contract that keeps her in Orlando through the 2012-13 season.

The 2008-09 Conference USA Coach of the Year is set to continue on the success of her second season with the Knights, in which UCF won the C-USA Championship and played in the NCAA Tournament.

"I'm extremely excited about the new contract and honored to lead UCF Knights Women's Basketball for the next 4 years," Williams said. "The future of the program is very, very bright. We have laid a good foundation, and we're going to continue to do that. Our hope is to really build this program into a top-25 program." 
 

UCF Director of Athletics Keith Tribble stressed the importance of keeping Williams.
 

"I am very pleased to ensure that Joi Williams will be the UCF Women's Basketball coach through 2013," Tribble said in a UCF release. "It was important for our university and our athletics department that Joi would continue to lead our program in the coming years."
Williams' original contract had 2 years remaining.
 

She would not disclose the financial details of the contract but did say that there are incentives in the new deal for accomplishments such as reaching the NCAA Tournament.
"I felt confident that we were going to be able to accomplish some good things, you just never know when that is going to happen," Williams said. "Of course, there is a lot more security in knowing you have the trust of the president and the athletic director for another 4 years.
 

"That makes me feel good, that makes everybody around our program feel very secured that there's confidence in what we're doing and belief in what we're doing."
 

This past season, the Knights finished the season 17-16 and 11-5 in conference play.
 

The first three seasons in C-USA the Knights won a combined 11 games. UCF started the season 2-11 and turned it around, going 15-5 the rest of the way.
 

In the C-USA tournament the Knights won four consecutive games in New Orleans on their way to the conference crown.
 

Williams and her squad earned an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament, the program's third trip to the postseason, the first since 1999.
 

UCF took on the third seed in its region, the University of North Carolina, eventually losing 85-80 to the Tar Heels.
 

"We want to build on what we did last year," Williams said. "Certainly we're not satisfied. We could have done some things even better, and that is what we're trying to focus on now is really being more consistent, especially with the non-conference and building on our conference season, because our conference is going to be very competitive this year."
 

UCF won two of its 13 non-conference games but finished winning 15 of its  final 20 games, including going 8-0 in conference play at the UCF Arena.
 

Williams was hired as the women's basketball team's 11th head coach on March 29, 2007.
In her first season, the team finished 10-20, winning 10 games for the first time since 2004-05.
 

On her young squad, freshmen accounted for 91 percent of the playing time in the 2007-08 season. 
 

With the success Williams had in her first two years, expectations for year three are higher.

Everyone on the roster is back for next year.
 

"We return everybody, but so do several teams in our league," Williams said. "We can't rest where we are and celebrate. We have to keep moving forward. The bar has been raised, and that's what we want to do, continue to raise it."