Taylor Reed is in her sixth season with the HCU women's basketball program and her second as the program’s associate head coach.
Reed has been part of an HCU staff that routinely sees its roster place in the top-25 among all NCAA Division I women’s basketball teams for team GPA, including this past 2023-24 season when the Huskies ranked 18th nationally. HCU has been in the WBCA Academic Top 25 in each of the last six seasons and 11 of the last 12.
Last season, the Huskies finished with a 6-23 overall record with senior N’Denasija Collins picking up first team academic all-conference honors. The year prior, 2022-23, HCU ended the year with a record of 11-18 with a 6-12 mark in conference play. The Huskies stood at 6-6 two-thirds of the way through the league schedule but finished the season on a six-game losing streak.
2021-22 was a record-breaking season for HCU women’s basketball as the Huskies won their first Southland Conference regular season title in program history and finished with a conference record of 12-2. The team qualified for the WNIT and played their first D1 postseason game in program history against the Toledo Rockets in Toledo, Ohio.
Timia Jefferson was named player of the year for the Southland leading her team to the regular season title. Coach Finnie was named Coach of the Year while Coach Allison was voted the top D1 assistant in Texas by the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches. Kennedy Wilson and Julija Vujakovic were named Second Team All-Conference while Marilyn Nzoiwu was named to the All-Defensive team.
Off the floor the Huskies had a program-record five players named to the Southland All-Academic teams. Vujakovic and Jefferson were named to the first-team while Wilson, Nzoiwu and Abbey Sutherland were named second team.
The 2020-21 season was one for the books, with the team only playing 22 games in a shortened schedule due to covid constraints. Finishing with record of 11-11, the Huskies reached the second round of the Southland Conference Tournament in Katy. Sophomore guard Timia Jefferson was named second team all-conference, leading the Huskies with 15 ppg. Academically in the classroom, the Huskies once again led the way with a 3.62 team GPA with Julija Vujakovic and Timia Jefferson garnering second team All-Southland Academic team honors.
The 2019-20 season saw the Huskies take the floor with five highly-touted freshmen and a returning class which included five seniors. Timia Jefferson led all freshmen in the Southland Conference in scoring with a 10.2 clip on the year. Junior point guard Megan Valdez-Crader led the Huskies in scoring overall with 11.1 points per game, while Abbey Sutherland and Marilyn Nzowiu featured among the top players in the league in blocked shots. HCU had a couple of big road wins in the non-conference over ORU and ULM and a close game at Texas Tech, before starting conference play. The Huskies struggled with consistency in conference play, missing key players throughout, but showed improvement, particularly from the five freshmen. The team posted a 3.723 GPA for the year, with a record breaking 3.9 GPA in the spring semester. The team had all 15 athletes over a 3.5 for the semester and with cumulative GPAs all above a 3.0 for the first time in the program’s history.
Reed played two seasons at Louisiana Tech, earning CoSIDA Academic All-American honors as a senior in 2018-19. During that campaign, she played in 29 games, averaging 8.2 points and 1.4 rebounds per game, and finished her career ranked fourth all-time in Lady Techsters history with 148 3-pointers made. As a junior, she started all 31 games, averaging 10.9 points, 2.2 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game. Reed also played two seasons at Hutchinson Community College.
A Newton, Kansas, native, Reed was a standout at Newton High School, leading the program to the state playoffs three times in four seasons and was a two-time all-state selection.
