It's time for students and fans of FSU to start recognizing the best basketball team in Tallahassee. Sorry Rathan-Mayes and company, but I'm talking about the FSU Women's team. The Lady Noles are having their best season in school history, yet you'll see more students standing outside of Chick-fil-A on a Sunday than in the Tuck on game day.
The FSU Women's basketball team has set a school record in wins, wins in conference play, and earned their highest tournament seed ever. They also finished undefeated at home for the first time, thanks to that rowdy student section crowd. Wait, the ten guys/girls that check your tickets and tell you where you can't sit don't count as fans? Well we don't have to tell the team that..
A ton of credit has been given to Head Coach Sue Semrau, and rightfully so. Semrau was named the ACC coach of the year as well as the ESPNW Coach Of The Year, as she led the Lady Noles to their first 30 win season in school history. What is most impressive about this feat is that at the start of the season, seven of the fourteen players were brand new to the team.
In a (fake) interview I had with Coach Semrau, I asked her how she kept her team focused and out of trouble despite all of the adversity throughout the season. Shaking her head, Semrau replied, “Well that was simple. When it came to off the court matters, I told my girls that there are three rules."
1) Don't “forget" to pay for the crab legs you get from Publix. Better yet, don't even buy crab legs from Publix. They're overpriced and out of season.
2) Don't get on tables in the middle of campus and yell obscene phrases. If you feel like yelling something, get on a table and let everyone know when our next home game is. I counted three students at our last game. Double digits would be nice.
3) No. Means. No.
Coach Semrau winked at me and said, “we still love you Jameis", after that last rule, which was about when I ended this fake interview I made up. Again, none of those words written in quotes above ever came out of Sue Semrau's mouth. In fact, my only actual interaction with the coach of the year was after a big win, when I yelled, “great game coach!". She then proceeded to frat point at me, indicating that "she's the man", before walking into the locker room.
In more serious talk, the FSU Women's basketball team has been nothing short of remarkable this year. They finished the regular season with a record of 29-4, destroying teams along the way. All these amazing accomplishments are being pushed aside; however, as the Lady Noles have a trip to the Final Four and a Championship in mind. So be courageous like my roommate Corey, who went ahead and booked a hotel in Tampa (site of the women's Final Four), despite us still needing to win more games to get there. This is because at FSU, we're winners. And to use an actual quote from our own Jameis Winston, “If we gon' do it den, we gon' do it big den".
