FORT MYERS, Fla. – Florida Gulf Coast University women's basketball concludes its three-game road stretch Wednesday at Bellarmine from Louisville, Kentucky.
Head coach Karl Smesko is aiming for win No. 600 at FGCU Wednesday. Smesko has also produced a level of sustained and nearly unmatched success, guiding the Eagles to 13 straight 25-win seasons - a feat that only UConn and FGCU have achieved.
Tip-off against the Knights is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on ESPN+. FGCU is a perfect 4-0 when facing Bellarmine. The smallest margin of victory for the Eagles has been a 23-point spread. The Green and Blue won 86-44 a season ago in Fort Myers. FGCU holds the nation's longest active conference winning streak at 29 consecutive wins against current member institutions.
The Eagles (17-4, 7-0 ASUN) are winners of ten straight, coming from their Tennessee sweep of Lipscomb and Austin Peay. Although FGCU is the only remaining undefeated ASUN team in league play, the Eagles are perched just one game ahead of 6-1 Central Arkansas.
Emani Jefferson earned back-to-back Atlantic Sun Conference Newcomer and Player of the Week honors Monday. Jefferson set a new personal career-high in points last Thursday at Lipscomb, nearly producing a triple-double performance in the win over the Bisons. She poured in 27 points in an all-around effort, accompanied by 11 boards and five assists.
The Miami native is averaging a team-leading 16.9 points per game in 12 appearances, which ranks third in the ASUN, and eclipsed the 1,000-career point benchmark at Lipscomb as well.
FGCU paces the conference in offensive productivity with 74.3 points per game and in overall defense. The Eagles are giving up a league-best of just 56.1 points per game, the best since FGCU's 2016-17 season, including an NCAA Tournament appearance.
NOTES:
- Head coach Karl Smesko has built and engineered the program's historic ascension within the women's college basketball world with its #Raining3s attack, leading the nation in made threes per game the last four seasons. This season, FGCU is currently averaging 9.2 made threes per game, 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 climbed back up to No. 4 overall in the latest CollegeInsider.com's Mid Major Top 25 Poll, and 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 has 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 during the last four campaigns.
- FGCU, South Carolina, Stanford and UConn are the only four Division 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 First Round victory. FGCU is the winningest 12th seed in NCAA Tournament history.
- With an all-time win percentage of .845, the Green and Blue soared into the 2023-24 season as the winningest program in the history of women's college basketball. 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.
- Smesko's career win percentage of .829 (660-136) has him positioned as the third-winningest active Division I head coach, just behind 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.
