On this day seven years ago, FGCU added another massive notch to its belt.
Florida Gulf Coast women’s basketball made its first-ever NCAA Tournament in 2012, a huge step for a program that didn’t even exist before the turn of the millennium. A handful of months later in the next season but same year, the Eagles pulled off a 76-70 home victory over LSU, a sign that FGCU was here to stay.
It was the first half of a home-and-home and the inaugural meeting between the two schools, with the second part of the two-game series to be played in Baton Rouge the following December.
FGCU jumped to an early lead that lasted through almost all of the first half, though the margin remained thin. Right before the break, LSU nabbed a couple of points from the free-throw line, giving it a 36-35 advantage at halftime.
A back-and-forth second half with ties, lead changes and plenty of drama ensued. Neither team opened up a lead greater than three points until the final minutes of the game when FGCU attempted to pull away, leading 68-62 off of a couple free throws via Sarah Hansen with 2:29 to play. LSU responded to get back within two, but Stephanie Haas pulled off a layup to extend the difference back to six with 1:21 to go.
Things got a bit dicey as LSU managed four-straight points in 19 seconds from free throws and layups, down only two with 47 ticks remaining. But Hansen coolly drilled her shots at the charity stripe, then did it again after the Tigers scored to shrink the lead back to two with 20 seconds left. Those free throws turned out to be the difference as FGCU celebrated a victory over a power-conference team that would see some decent success in the 2012-13 campaign.
Hansen finished the game with 30 points, nine rebounds and three steals on 7-of-12 shooting from the field and an incredible 14-of-14 mark from the free-throw line. Joyce Iamstrong was immense in her own right, too, with 20 points and four triples, plus 19 points and six assists from Brittany Kennedy helped make a difference. As a team, FGCU shot only 23.3 percent from beyond the arc (7-of-30), but it held LSU to about the same (3-of-12, 25 percent), mitigating an abnormal shooting night for the Eagles.
The win was one of the most impressive regular season triumphs FGCU has seen. LSU went on to finish in the top half of an extremely deep SEC that sent seven teams to the NCAA Tournament, with five of those as top four seeds. The Tigers were awarded the No. 6 seed in the Spokane Regional and proceeded to win their first two games, advancing to the second weekend following a 75-71 victory over No. 11 Green Bay in the first round and a 71-66 upset of No. 3 Penn State in the second round. LSU fell to No. 2 California in the Sweet 16, 73-63, and finished its season 22-12 (10-6).
The Spin on 2012-13 FGCU
The Eagles would not qualify for the NCAA Tournament in 2013 despite winning the Atlantic Sun regular season championship with a perfect 18-0 conference record. The A-Sun title was FGCU’s second in a row and fourth since joining the league before the 2007-08 season.
It was Karl Smesko’s 11th season as the FGCU head coach, the only person to hold the position in the program’s short but illustrious history. Hansen lead the team in scoring and rebounding, averaging 16.3 points and 7.5 boards per contest, plus shooting from the charity stripe 169 times in the season and converting almost 83 percent of those attempts. Iamstrong was the other double-figure scorer with 12.0 points per night, and Kennedy was the team’s top distributor with 5.0 dimes per game. FGCU finished 27-7 overall with a WNIT first round exit.
