FORT MYERS, Fla. – Florida Gulf Coast University women's basketball returns to the court Saturday to take on Stetson University in DeLand. Tipoff against the Hatters is scheduled for 2 p.m. on ESPN+.
The Eagles are riding a five-game win streak and have begun Atlantic Sun Conference play 2-0 with road wins over Jacksonville and North Florida. Stetson is one of only four ASUN teams starting the conference season 2-0, defeating North Florida and Jacksonville.
FGCU is 34-5 all-time against Stetson and has consistently dominated the ASUN regular season. The Eagles have lost just seven ASUN regular season games since the start of the 2011-12 season when FGCU became eligible for postseason play.
The Eagles hold the nation's second-longest active conference win streak, winning 24 straight against current ASUN members – just three behind UNLV's nation-leading 27 consecutive victories in Mountain West Conference action.
The Green and Blue lead the ASUN in five statistical categories: scoring defense (56.1), scoring offense (73.8), scoring margin (17.6), three-point attempts per game (29.8), and three-pointers per game (9.2). Uju Ezeudu's 31 steals on the season also pace the conference.
NOTES:
- Head coach Karl Smesko has built and engineered the program's ascension within the women's college basketball world by its #Raining3s attack, leading the nation in made threes per game for four consecutive seasons. FGCU is currently averaging 9.2 made threes per game this season, ranking 12th nationally in the category. FGCU holds the NCAA record for the most made threes in a single season, sinking 431 during the 2017-18 campaign.
- The Eagles fell to No. 5 overall in the latest CollegeInsider.com's Mid Major Top 25 Poll, but have received votes in the Associated Press Poll twice this season after knocking off No. 18 North Carolina in the Gulf Coast Showcase. The Green and Blue have finished in the AP Top 25 in five out of the last six seasons. FGCU is the only mid-major program with four straight AP Top 25 finishes over the previous four campaigns.
- FGCU, South Carolina, Stanford and UConn are the only four D-I programs to record 30 or more wins in three of the last five seasons. The Eagles went 33-4 a season ago, winning their 13th ASUN regular season title and ninth ASUN Tournament Championship, along with capturing their fourth-ever NCAA Tournament victory. FGCU earned 10 of the 12 first-place votes in the 2023-24 ASUN Preseason Coaches Poll and 38 of the possible 40 first-place votes in the ASUN Preseason Media Poll.
- The Green and Blue soared into the 2023-24 season as the all-time winningest program in women's college basketball history, with a win percentage of .845.
- Smesko's career winning percentage of .828 (655-136) has him positioned as the third-winningest active Division I head coach, just behind none other than UConn's Geno Auriemma and LSU's Kim Mulkey. In 2021, FGCU shocked the LSU Tigers in Baton Rouge 88-74. Smesko was named to Her Hoops Stats' 2024 preseason watch list for the Kathy Delaney-Smith Mid-Major Coach of the Year Award.
