Lindsay Gottlieb

Lindsay Gottlieb was born on October 2, 1977, in Scarsdale, New York. Her interest in basketball began at an early age, though a knee injury during her senior year of high school at Scarsdale High School led her to consider a coaching career. She attended Brown University, where she played basketball her freshman year and later served as both a player and student assistant coach during her senior year in 1999, earning a Bachelor of Arts in political science. Following graduation, she pursued a Master’s degree in philosophy of education at Syracuse University while serving as an assistant coach (1999-2001).

Gottlieb’s coaching career progressed with assistant roles at New Hampshire (2001-2002) and Richmond (2002-2005), where her teams consistently achieved 20-win seasons and postseason appearances. She then joined the University of California, Berkeley as an assistant coach in 2005, where she helped guide the Golden Bears to their first winning season in 13 years and multiple NCAA Tournament bids. Her first head coaching opportunity came in 2008 with UC Santa Barbara, leading them to two Big West regular-season championships in 2009 and 2011, and an NCAA Tournament appearance in her debut season.

In 2011, Gottlieb returned to Cal as head coach, where she achieved significant milestones including the program’s first-ever NCAA Final Four appearance in 2013 and a share of its first Pac-12 Conference regular-season title. During her eight seasons at Cal, she compiled a 179-89 overall record, with seven NCAA Tournament appearances. In 2019, she made history as one of the few female assistant coaches in the NBA, joining the Cleveland Cavaliers for two seasons. She returned to collegiate coaching in 2021 as the head coach of the USC Trojans, quickly revitalizing the program with back-to-back NCAA Elite Eight appearances in 2024 and 2025, and securing the program’s first Big Ten regular-season title in 2025. Gottlieb has an overall collegiate head coaching record of 328-164.