Double the Buzz: USF Men’s and Women’s Basketball Poised for Big Seasons

Basketball season officially begins on Monday, November 3, for the USF men's and women's teams. They'll headline a doubleheader at the Yuengling Center.

The women tip off at 6 p.m. against Fairfield, followed by the men at 8 p.m. against Florida A&M. And with that, a season that will look much different than a year ago -- or, in the women's case, 25 years ago -- will be underway.

The women's team will be operating under interim head coach Michele Woods-Baxter following the surprising departure last week of Jose Fernandez to coach the Dallas Wings of the WNBA. Fernandez was about to enter his 26th season as USF's head coach when the news broke about his departure.

Woods-Baxter shouldn't have much of a learning curve, however. She is entering her 18th year on USF's coaching staff and has served as the associate head coach since 2018.

She is also renowned for her international recruiting prowess. Ten of USF's 14 players came from outside the United States.

American Conference coaches believe the Bulls, who are the defending tournament champions, will be formidable again. They chose USF No. 1 in the preseason conference poll for the sixth consecutive time.

Senior forward Carla Brito was named the American Preseason Player of the Year, and graduate forward L'or Mputu was chosen first-team all conference.

The Bulls lost their leading scorer, Sammie Puisis, from last year and had four others leave through the Transfer Portal: forward Romi Levy, sophomore guard Vittoria Blasigh, freshman guard Amy Thompson, and junior forward Jeniffer Silva.

However, they brought in solid reinforcements in 5-10 graduate student guard Katie Davidson, a first-team All-Horizon League selection at IU-Indianapolis), 5-7 graduate student guard Edyn Battle, who was first team All-Atlantic Sun selection at Jacksonville) 5-10 junior guard Kirsten Lewis-Williams, who was second-team All-MAC with Buffalo's WNIT champions) and 5-8 junior guard Stefanie Ingram from Florida Atlantic.

The men's program has undergone a near-total renovation since the close of last year's traumatic season. Following the shocking death of head coach Amir Abdur-Rahim less than two weeks before the season began, the Bulls battled under interim coach Ben Fletcher, but the circumstances were overwhelming.

Enter new coach Bryan Hodgson and 13 new players on a 15-man squad.

Hodgson promised a relentless, fever-pitched attack, and if the results of Friday's exhibition game with Saint Leo are any indication, he may have undersold it.

The Bulls beat the Lions 120-63. That is not a misprint.

"These exhibition games, sometimes you'd rather just play a top 10 team in the country out of the gate, because you see it every year," Hodgson said. "Somebody loses these games. And, man, it wouldn't be a great way to start my tenure here at South Florida,"

Hodgson added, without a trace of irony, "I wanted to dictate the pace of the game, and we did that, obviously, scoring 120 points, really, getting out in transition, getting up and down. Something we talk about a lot is dictating the pace."

Veteran USF reporter Joey Knight of the Tampa Bay Times was impressed.

That playing style led to 25 wins last year when Hodgson coached Arkansas State. Included in that total was a 13-point win at Memphis and a nine-point overtime win at UAB.

Hodgson brought in a top-30 high school recruiting class along with several key pieces through the portal, including 6-10 forward Izaiyah Nelson and 6-5 guard Joseph Pinion, both from Arkansas State.

"We're not playing the scoreboard. We break the game down into four-minute wars between media timeouts. We weren't going to allow any let-up. If I felt like there was any let-up at all, I was going to call a timeout and we were going to, fix it," he said.

"Our goal was to hold them to 25 points in the second half. They ended up with 28, but I think our guys understood the mission we've got. We have a veteran team with great leadership, a player-led team, and they knew that we were going to we were going to execute and play to our standard of basketball for 40 minutes regardless of the score."

Buckle up, folks. This is going to be fun.