FSU women’s basketball announces the 2023 recruiting class

The 2023 class marks the first class that Brooke Wyckoff will bring in as head coach. While this class doesn’t feature the multiple five-stars or McDonald’s All-Americans that were found on former coach Sue Semrau’s best classes, this is an interesting class and if everything comes together it could be a good one that addresses more than one critical need.

Let’s meet the class and then discuss how these new players will fit in the program going forward.

Florida State announced the signings of four players:

Lucía Navarro (wing, Valencia, Spain)

Carla Viegas (wing, Malaga, Spain)

Sakyia White (forward, Jones College, Tuscaloosa, Ala.)

Avery Treadwell (forward, Knoxville, Tenn.)

From Florida State sports information:

Viegas has been dubbed as the world’s best 3-point shooter after making a name for herself at the U17 World Championship, where she finished 23-of-51 from downtown (45.1 percent). The feat was the highest 3-point field goal percentage in the history of the tournament by someone who has recorded 40 or more 3-point field goal attempts.

Navarro possesses a strong inside-out game with a sweet left-handed stroke from the outside. She is part of the Valencia Basketball Club and has established herself on the U18 Spanish Team. Navarro’s versatility includes being able to play multiple positions and defend several types of players. In her U18 league, Navarro is averaging 14 points and 11 rebounds per game.

White has proven to be one of the top junior college players in the country, earning first-team All-America honors in the 2021-22 season for Jones College in Ellisville, Miss. She averaged 16.8 points and 11.9 rebounds per game to go along with 18 double-doubles in what was an impressive first season at the junior college level. White is the nation’s consensus No. 1 junior college player, ranking atop lists put together by World Exposure Report and Dan Olson Girls Basketball Report.

Treadwell earned state tournament MVP honors and was the District 4-4A regular season MVP as a junior. Last year she surpassed 1,000 career points and averaged 15 points, 10 rebounds and three blocked shots per game. As a sophomore, her development grew when she averaged 13.8 points and 10.4 rebounds.

From this year’s team Florida State will lose at least Jazmine Massengill, Taylor O’Brien and Valencia Myers as all of those players will have exhausted their eligibility. Of course other players may choose to leave via the transfer portal but right now only those three are certain to leave.

This means that Navarro and Viegas will join a talented backcourt and wing rotation while the frontcourt will see White and Treadwell join Makayla Timpson and Mariana Valenzuela.

This class adds much needed size and outside shooting. If Viegas can shoot in college anywhere near how well she did at the U17 World Championship she will be just what the doctor ordered for a team that has struggled from behind the arc since Leticia Romero graduated. Regarding the frontcourt, White looks like an absolute gem. She could form a real dynamic duo with Timpson. Treadwell may need to be brought along a bit more slowly but she has quite a bit of potential.

Overall, this is a good class that addresses (at least in part) two critical needs in size and perimeter shooting. However, the ACC just keeps getting better. There are around eight teams in the ACC that could lay claim to a top 25 class. On paper, FSU’s class is not in that group. However, half the class is from overseas and the class features a prominent JUCO player so the class as a whole may not get rated properly by recruiting sites. Even so, this is the first FSU class since 2012 that has featured high school players that hasn’t had at least one ESPN top 100 player. That may not matter much if Coach Wyckoff has done a good job finding diamonds in the rough. There is evidence that she has done just that but time will tell.

Next Game

Florida State will travel to Ohio to face Kent State tonight at 7pm. The game will be broadcast on ESPN+.