USF women's basketball NCAA tournament run ends with a loss to Tennessee

As it became obvious the USF women’s basketball team was going to lose to Tennessee if their first-round NCAA tournament game, it was time for perspective.

Tennessee was not just better, the Vols were a lot better. They were deeper, by a lot. That’s not an indictment of the Bulls, but it does magnify the gap between USF and the elite programs.

The 101-66 final score sums it up.

We’ll talk about that later, but let’s first reflect on this  USF team, and what comes next.

The Bulls say goodbye to graduate guard Sammie Puisis, one of their brightest stars ever and. In the first quarter against the Vols,  she put up 15 of her overall 28 points. She nearly half of USF’s  66 points  and now looks forward to what comes next.

The WNBA? Maybe.

However, this was a time for reflection as Puisis battled emotion after battling back from a devastating ACL injury to earn first-team all-conference honors.

“I had a lot of support from going through my knee injury, getting back on the court. I'm very thankful for God and everything he done for me, and all the strength he's given me,” she said.

“I’m just so glad I was able to come back, because some people have tough injuries and it kind of takes them out of it. I'm just really grateful for my teammates, my coaches, and just getting to play on a big stage like this again.”

Point guard Mama Dembele, a transfer from Missouri, made a significant impact in her only season in green and gold. She came to USF to participate in the NCAA tournament, and that mission was accomplished largely by her contributions.

But the collegiate game in the NIL and transfer portal era is a year-to-year thing today. Given USF coach Jose Fernandez’s bent for international recruiting, we wait to see what the roster looks like next year.

“We’ve got really good guys returning. We're gonna have to definitely gonna go in the portal and fill some positions that we're going to fill right with guys that are going to fit our system, and they're going to fit as student athletes at the University of South Florida,” he said.

We already know the non-conference schedule won’t look much different than this year. UConn and South Carolina are coming to Tampa. The Bulls will play Duke again.

But that’s for later.

For now, we salute a team that dared to challenge the best and didn’t back down. The Bulls went to UConn and South Carolina, battled Louisville, Mississippi State, and TCU, and beat Duke.

They won the American Athletic Conference tournament championship and went to the NCAA tournament for the 10th time in program history.

Tennessee was better Friday night, but considering everything, USF didn’t need to apologize for anything.

‘I really enjoyed coaching this group. We put this group through a lot of November and December, playing the type of schedule that we played,” Fernandez said.

The games at UConn and South Carolina, matchups against Louisville, Duke, Vanderbilt, TCU, and Mississippi State, toughened the Bulls enough to claim a conference championship.

The NCAA journey didn’t last long, but at least they had it.

What comes next? We’ll find out later.

For now, say goodbye to a team that won 23 games and a conference championship. Well done.