VILLANOVA, Pa. – We aren’t accomplished dancing but.
The No. 22 and 12th-seeded FGCU ladies’s basketball group (33-3) waltzed into Second Spherical of the 2023 NCAA Girls’s Basketball Event in model Saturday afternoon, as graduate guard Sha Carter (Southfield, Mich./Wylie E. Groves HS/Walsh) scored a game-high 24 factors to guide the Eagles to a 74-63 victory over 23rd-ranked and fifth-seeded Washington State at Finneran Pavilion.
The Inexperienced & Blue earned a Monday date with both fourth-seeded Villanova or 13th-seeded Cleveland State for the fitting to advance to the Candy 16. FGCU additionally superior to the Second Spherical in 2015, 2018 and 2022, and is now 57-7 all-time as a ranked group, 48-16 all-time in Division I postseason play and 4-8 within the NCAA Event.
Recreation time for Monday’s recreation shall be introduced by ESPN both late Saturday or early Sunday.
FGCU is likely one of the hottest groups within the nation, having received 15 straight video games – which incorporates capturing a 13th ASUN regular-season title and the ASUN Event crown for a document 10th time. That is FGCU’s seventh straight NCAA Event apperance and ninth general in simply 12 years of eligibility, becoming a member of squads from the 2021-22, 2020-21, 2018-19, 2017-18, 2016-17, 2014-15, 2013-14, and 2011-12 seasons.
FGCU has made 413 3-pointers this season – simply 17 3s behind their very own all-time document of 431 in 2017-18. The Eagles have tripled their opponents’ treys whole, permitting solely 132 this season. FGCU has led the nation in made 3s per recreation in every of the previous three years and in 4 of the final 5 seasons.
Coming into this season, FGCU was chosen by each the coaches and the media to repeat as ASUN champions. FGCU is at the moment ranked No. 2 within the Collegeinsider.com Mid-Main Prime 25 ballot. The Eagles completed with a program-best-ever No. 20 rating in 2021-22 and have 4 Prime 25 finishes up to now 5 seasons.
The Inexperienced & Blue and Connecticut are the one energetic applications within the nation to win not less than 25 video games in 13 straight seasons. FGCU joins South Carolina as the one two Division I applications to win 30 or extra video games in six of the final 9 seasons.
For full protection of FGCU ladies’s basketball, comply with the Eagles on Twitter, Instagram and Fb at @FGCU_WBB and on-line at www.FGCUAthletics.com. You can even signal as much as have information on FGCU ladies’s basketball and different applications delivered on to your inbox by visiting www.fgcuathletics.com/e mail.
COACH SMESKO
FGCU head coach Karl Smesko maintains a document of 643-131 (.831) general in his profession, the third-highest successful share amongst energetic Division I coaches behind solely UConn’s Geno Auriemma and LSU’s Kim Mulkey. He has additionally led the Eagles to a 249-19 (.929) mark in ASUN regular-season play and a 33-2 (.943) document in ASUN event play. Over the earlier eleven-plus seasons, he has guided FGCU to a 185-7 (.963) document in convention play with six undefeated seasons. The 13-time ASUN Coach of the Yr has led this system to 13 straight 25-win seasons and 19 consecutive 20-win campaigns, together with 30-plus wins in six of the final 9 years. On high of all that, the Eagles are 582-104 (.848) all-time since Smesko began this system within the 2002-03 season, and the Inexperienced & Blue’s .848 all-time successful share is the perfect in NCAA Division I ladies’s basketball historical past.
E.A.G.L.E. CAMPAIGN
IT TAKES A TEAM to realize our latest aim – a $10 million marketing campaign to deal with student-athlete wants in continued educational success, life expertise, psychological well being, diet, and power and conditioning in addition to departmental wants in facility growth and enchancment in addition to mentoring and management coaching for coaches and employees. The identify embodies our mission and the aim of the E.A.G.L.E. Marketing campaign – Eagle Athletics Producing Lifetime Excellence. Be part of Our Staff and pledge your reward as we speak to assist the Eagles of tomorrow!
#FEEDFGCU
FGCU Athletics sponsors occasions in November and April to profit the FGCU Campus Meals Pantry (https://www.fgcu.edu/adminservices/foodpantry) and the Harry Chapin Meals Financial institution (www.harrychapinfoodbank.org), FGCU Athletics’ charities of alternative. For extra data, together with the best way to make a contribution, please go to https://www.fgcu.edu/adminservices/foodpantry and make the most of the hashtag #FeedFGCU to assist elevate consciousness.
ABOUT FGCU
FGCU groups have mixed to win an unimaginable 96 convention common season and event titles in simply 15-plus seasons on the Division I stage. Moreover, in simply eleven-plus seasons of D-I postseason eligibility, the Eagles have had a mixed 48 groups or people compete in NCAA championships. In 2022, the boys’s golf group grew to become the primary program to earn an at-large berth to the NCAA Event. 9 FGCU applications have earned a top-25 nationwide rating of their respective sport – together with ladies’s basketball (No. 20 in 2021-22 and No. 22 in 2022-23), baseball (No. 20 in 2023), seashore volleyball (No. 20, 2022), and each males’s soccer (2018, 2019) and ladies’s soccer (2018) as 5 of the newest. In 2016-17, the Inexperienced & Blue posted a department-best sixth-place end within the DI-AAA Learfield Administrators’ Cup and top-100 exhibiting nationally, forward of a number of Energy-5 and FBS establishments. In 2018-19, the Eagles had an ASUN and state of Florida greatest seven groups earn the NCAA’s Public Recognition Award for his or her Tutorial Progress Charge of their sport. FGCU additionally collectively earned a document 3.66 GPA within the classroom within the fall 2022 semester and has outperformed the final College undergraduate inhabitants for 27 consecutive semesters. The previous seven semesters (Fall 2019 – Fall 2022) noticed one other milestone reached as all 15 applications achieved a 3.0-or-higher cumulative group GPA. The Eagles additionally served an all-time excessive 7,200 volunteer hours in 2017 – being acknowledged as one among two runners-up for the inaugural NACDA Group Service Award introduced by the Fiesta Bowl.
—FGCUATHLETICS.COM—
