No. 7 Seed Florida State Opens NCAA First Round on Friday

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The seventh-seeded Florida State Women’s Basketball team begins its March Madness run on Friday afternoon when it faces No. 10 seed Georgia at 1:30 p.m. ET/12:30 CT at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

• TV: Friday’s matchup against the Lady Bulldogs airs on ESPN2.
• Radio: The matchup can be heard locally on 96.5 FM and 1270 AM, and can be accessed anywhere on Seminoles Leanplayer.
• In-game updates: Fans can follow on the FSU Women’s Basketball Twitter Account (@fsuwbb).

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• For the 10th consecutive season, Florida State Women’s Basketball participates in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, joining only Baylor, Louisville, Maryland, South Carolina, Stanford, Tennessee and UConn on the active list. Of the 350 current Division I institutions, Florida State is the select 2.3 percent of schools who have made the Big Dance over the last 10 seasons.
• The seventh-seeded Seminoles (23-9) are one of eight programs in the NCAA Tournament who are scoring at an average of 80 points or more this season. FSU is averaging an ACC-best 80.1 points per game and looks to average 80+ points for just the third time in program history.
• Freshman star Ta’Niya Latson was recently recognized as the National Freshman of the Year by The Athletic. The Miami, Fla., native set the ACC single-season freshman scoring record and currently has 659 total points. Latson eclipsed the previous mark held by UNC’s Diamond Deshields in the 2013-14 season (627 points). Latson and O’Mariah Gordon will be out for the remainder of the NCAA postseason.
• Florida State (23-9) and Georgia (21-11) play for the first time in 12 years on Friday afternoon. The Seminoles are looking for their first win against the Lady Bulldogs, showing an 0-8 all-time record.
• Despite being picked ninth in the ACC, Florida State tied for fourth in the conference regular season and earned the No. 5 seed in the ACC Tournament in Head Coach Brooke Wyckoff’s first season as the permanent head coach. When Wyckoff was the Interim Head Coach in 2020-21, FSU was picked eighth in the league and finished fourth. In both her seasons at the helm, Wyckoff’s teams have jumped four spots from prediction to ACC finish.
• The Seminoles delivered a 12-6 record in ACC play this season, their most wins in the conference since the 2017-18 season.
• FSU enters its NCAA First Round matchup ranking in the Top 10 nationally in free throws made per game (sixth), blocks per game (eighth), defensive rebounds per game (eighth), rebounds per game (ninth) and scoring offense (10th).
• Florida State joins Notre Dame and Louisville as ACC programs making 17 of the last 18 NCAA Tournaments.
• The Seminoles are a No. 7 seed for just the second time in program history. The first time was when Brooke Wyckoff led FSU to the Midwest Region in Ames, Iowa, in 2001 as FSU defeated No. 10 seed Tulane in the NCAA First Round. Wyckoff was a second-team All-American in that year as a senior.
• FSU owns three NET Top 25 wins over North Carolina (21), Duke (10) and NC State (17) by a combined margin of +13.0 points.
• Against the current field of 68, Florida State owns wins over No. 3 seed Duke (70-57), No. 9 seed Miami (92-85), No. 7 seed NC State (91-72), No. 6 seed North Carolina (78-71) and No. 11 seed Purdue (76-75).
• With 23 wins this season, FSU has a chance to reach its seventh 25-win season in program history.
• With 286 rebounds this season, Makayla Timpson is looking to become the fifth Seminole to reach 300 or more boards in a single year. The last to do it was Kiah Gillespie (307) in the 2018-19 season.
• Erin Howard’s current 3-point field goals made streak of 25 straight games is the longest by a Seminole since Imani Wright had a 28-game streak in the 2017-18 season.
• Georgia marks the second opponent from the SEC that FSU faces this season. In its annual rivalry matchup with Florida on Nov. 16 in Tallahassee, the Seminoles won 92-77 behind Ta’Niya Latson’s 32 points.
• The Seminoles’ 176 blocked shots this season, which rank eighth nationally, are a program record.
• FSU is looking for its first win in the NCAA Tournament since 2019 when it defeated No. 12 seed Bucknell, 70-67, in Charlotte. Current graduate forward Valencia Myers had 15 points in that game while current graduate guard Taylor O’Brien was a freshman for the Bison at the time.
• For the fifth consecutive year, the ACC had eight teams make the NCAA Tournament – leading all conferences.
• The Seminoles have now won 10 or more games in ACC play for eight consecutive years.
• Sara Bejedi’s improved play this season is highlighted by her nearly doubling her scoring average from a season ago, going from 6.4 points to 11.0 points this year.

IN THE FEED:

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