FanPost

FSU Women’s Basketball Notebook

FSU point guard Leticia Romero - Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports

Florida State University and ESPN announced today that FSU will be hosting a "Play 4Kay" game on Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. on ESPN2 against Notre Dame. Kay Yow is the legendary former North Carolina State coach who passed away in 2009 from breast cancer. Every year Play4Kay games are played in her honor and the proceeds go to breast cancer charities. For this game in Tallahassee, the proceeds will go to the Sharon Ewing Walker Breast Health Center at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare.

On the court, this will be a statement game for FSU. In the preseason both FSU and Notre Dame appear to be top 10 quality teams. Notre Dame lost in the NCAA championship game to Connecticut last year but beat FSU in the ACC championship game. Even though Notre Dame loses #1 overall WNBA pick and WNBA Rookie of the Year Jewell Loyd, the Irish roster is still loaded with talent. They return three players in Brianna Turner, Lindsay Allen, and Taya Reimer who averaged double figure points last year. They also signed the 5th best recruiting class in the nation in 2015 according to ESPN's HoopGurlz. This will probably be the only home game all season in which the Noles will be underdogs. If FSU can win this game it will be a huge feather in their cap for NCAA Tournament seeding purposes and it will come less than a week before the ACC Tournament begins.

Recruiting

HoopGurlz released its updated class rankings today and it was nothing but good news for the Seminoles. FSU's current recruiting class has commitments from four players and three of them are top 100 recruits. Of the three in the top 100 every single one of them rose in the updated rankings. Nicole Ekhomu (5* 5'9 G Bolingbrook, IL) rose from #26 to #19 overall. A'Tyanna Gaulden (5* 5'7 PG Americus, GA) rose from #36 to #21 overall. Nausia Woolfolk (4* 5'9 G Fort Valley, GA) rose from #60 to #53 overall. Woolfolk is the highest rated 4* player by HoopGurlz. There will be one more update to these rankings that will be done after the high school season is completed. It would not be a shock to see Woolfolk rated as a 5* player at that time.

Florida State has obviously collected an impressive array of talent in this class already but the Noles are still in the hunt for more top 100 players. Jasmine Walker (5* 6'3 F Montgomery, AL) is rated #23 overall and Tyasha Harris (5* 5'10 G Noblesville, IN) is rated #27 overall. Both players remain on FSU's wish list.

There are still several top players who have yet to commit. However, with the players FSU already has committed the Noles are basically a lock to have a top 10 class. If FSU can get either Walker or Harris (or both) or if their current players keep rising in the rankings it is not out of the question for FSU to secure a top 5 class. In the ultra-competitive ACC there is always pressure to recruit nationally ranked classes. In 2016 the Seminoles are meeting the challenge.

(Some information for this article was provided by the Florida State University sports information department.)

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