Short-handed Seminoles see season end in NCAA Tournament first round
Playing without their best player — who also happens to be one of the premier scorers in the country — and another key weapon, the Florida State women’s basketball ran out of steam Friday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Florida State was a No. 7 seed coming into the tournament, but without leading scorer Ta’Niya Latson and teammate O’Mariah Gordon, the Seminoles seemed like the underdog against No. 10 seed Georgia. The Bulldogs pulled away for a 66-54 win that ended FSU’s season at 23-10.
Here is the release from FSU Sports Information:
No. 7 seed Florida State Women’s Basketball ended its 2022-23 campaign after falling to 10th-seeded Georgia, 66-54, on Friday afternoon in the NCAA First Round held at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City.
The Seminoles (23-10) were without the services of proven scorers Ta’Niya Latson and O’Mariah Gordon due to injuries. They also sustained a long time period without All-ACC Team member Makayla Timpson, who suffered a cut above her eye five minutes into the game and missed nearly the rest of the first half.
Undermanned with seven or eight players, Florida State gave everything it had. The turning point came toward the end of the third quarter and early in the fourth when the Lady Bulldogs went on a 14-0 run. Georgia turned a 43-40 lead to a 57-40 advantage with 7:43 left in the game.
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Graduate guard Taylor O’Brien concluded her collegiate career in fine fashion, scoring 15 points with four rebounds and two steals. O’Brien, who enjoyed a tremendous four-year career at Bucknell before transferring to FSU, got the Seminoles back into the game by scoring eight straight points to cut FSU’s deficit to 43-40 with 2:03 left in the fourth quarter.
Redshirt senior Erin Howard led FSU with 19 points and nine rebounds, marking 26 consecutive games with at least one 3-point field goal made. The Madison, Wis., native caps her strong career having led FSU with 56 3-point field goals this season.
Florida State started the game holding an 18-13 first-quarter lead, but Georgia’s matchup zone defense extended itself more as the game went on. UGA guard Diamond Battles led all scorers with 21 points. The game was mostly a defensive slugfest, with UGA shooting 39.7 percent overall and the Seminoles shooting 26.9 percent.
FSU was able to out-score the Lady Bulldogs (22-11), 15-8, in second-chance points. Georgia out-rebounded FSU, 48-38.
Florida State returns next season looking to reload despite losing O’Brien, Howard, Valencia Myers and Jazmine Massengill, whom all have exhausted their NCAA eligibility. The Seminoles look to make it 11 consecutive seasons of making the NCAA Tournament – a current run that only seven other programs have matched.
FSU PRESS CONFERENCE (Courtesy of ASAP Sports)
BROOKE WYCKOFF: Obviously, first of all, congratulations to Georgia. They have a great team and played a great game today but we are obviously very disappointed.
I’m so proud of our team for battling through adversity as they have all year, and they were confident. We were cost coming into this game and I thought we had a great game plan. We played some pretty exceptional defense for a lot of the game against a physical Georgia team.
But unfortunately the ball just wouldn’t drop our way. You know, our shooting percentage, we left a little bit to be desired. But so proud of these two next to me, Erin Howard and Taylor O’Brien for how they battled and just left it all on the floor. They both had excellent college careers, and I think they showed just how amazing they are in their last college game. I’m so proud of them and just thankful for this opportunity to be here in the tournament.
Q. Either player, did you think you were getting good looks? Was it a matter of them not going down or something they were doing defensively?
TAYLOR O’BRIEN: Their defense was really all over the place, so finding easy and open shots was very difficult for us, but I think the looks that we did get were good looks and we just couldn’t knock them in.
For the most part we were hitting the shots we needed to take and taking the shots we needed to take but it’s just a matter of who wants it more at the end of the day and we didn’t get the 50/50 balls. We were just — we tried our best but we just didn’t come out on the end.
Q. Was there anything that they did defensively that made it that much harder? I mean, you knew that you were going to play the zone but it just seemed like it was just clogged up to beat the band there in the middle.
ERIN HOWARD: I think we were prepared for the zone but the beginning of the game we were getting almost any look we wanted and I think they just turned their pressure up on the ball handlers, taking away our first look. That’s really it. Denying like the first pass, kind of threw us out of our offense a little bit but at the end of the day we have got to make shots. We’ve got to knock them down. That’s on us.
Q. For either of you, when you have only eight available players and you go down to seven with Makayla’s injury for part of the first half, was stamina going to be an issue? Were you getting worn out at all?
TAYLOR O’BRIEN: I think we had pretty good stamina going into the game just because we’ve played with such intensity all year round. So we knew what we were getting ourselves into. We’ve been able to play at a high calibre for a long amount of minutes. I don’t think the wind was really an issue. It was just us putting — using that energy throughout game.
ERIN HOWARD: Yeah, I feel like it goes more to mental. I feel we’ve played this way the whole year. The first half of our season we only had eight players. I feel like we are used to it. Down the line, I feel like it’s a mental game. Ta’Niya, she’s one of our best scorers, she’s out, point guard, and we see Makayla go down, our starting five, all-conference player, it’s tough mentally but again, like we’ve been here before. So we are used to it. I don’t really think it was a stamina thing at the end of the day.
Q. Did you think you were getting good looks and was it a matter of them not going down?
BROOKE WYCKOFF: I thought we got good looks but to the girls’ point, they are big. They are physical. Even in their zone, it’s not your typical just stand their zone. They are getting up into bodies and clogging the paint.
But I did think we got some good looks, and you know, yeah, losing Makayla Timpson minutes into the game was tough and not have her when we were kind of rolling there made it a little tough.
But yeah, hats off to Georgia. They do, they play a really physical style of defense and make it tough to make shots.
Q. Was there anything that they did defensively that you just weren’t expecting or was it just that well executed?
BROOKE WYCKOFF: No. We knew exactly what they were going to do. Again, they are big, they are physical, they are — you know, they play 100 percent zone. They know what they are doing in their zone. There’s no question.
And again they can pressure in your zone which you don’t see so you have three kids across the top that are pressuring that are making the first pass tough and like high post is open but you’ve got to get the ball there and when you’re getting pressured and can’t get the ball, or can’t see it very well, that can be tough. But I did, I thought we found good shots. We had some good looks that just, again, just didn’t go down today.
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