1/11/2023 basketball Edit

New fast-paced offense revitalizes FSU women to start Brooke Wyckoff era

In Brooke Wyckoff's first season, the FSU women's basketball team is averaging 87.3 points per game, on pace to a program record. (FSU sports information)

Curt Weiler • TheOsceola

Senior Writer

From her first moments as the full-time head coach of the Florida State women’s basketball team, Brooke Wyckoff knew she wanted to introduce a swift change to the program’s offensive philosophy.

It wasn’t something she was able to do when she was the interim head coach for the Seminoles’ 2020-21 season while Sue Semrau was away on a one-year sabbatical. But when Wyckoff got the full reins of the program last March, after Semrau retired, the former FSU player knew she wanted to go in a different direction.

That direction, anchored by an offensive system introduced by FSU’s new associate head coach Bill Ferrara, has been a revelation for the Seminoles. Entering Thursday’s 6 p.m. home game against No. 11 NC State (13-3, 3-2 ACC), FSU (15-3, 4-1) is averaging 87.3 points per game, on pace to break the program record of 83.8 points per game set during the 1990-91 season.

That offense, which Ferrara calls pace-and-space, helped FSU to a 4-0 start in ACC play, the program’s best conference start since 2008-09. Before Sunday’s 77-71 overtime loss at Boston College, FSU had scored 75 or more points in each of its first 17 games this season and is currently leading the ACC and third nationally in scoring offense.

And it traces back to Wyckoff’s frequent times meeting Ferrara while the two were on the road recruiting as assistant coaches, Wyckoff at FSU and Ferrara at his numerous stops which have brought him here.

“Every time Bill and I spoke, it was always a great conversation that usually revolved around basketball, something interesting basketball-wise. I picked up very quickly just in conversations that he had a basketball mind, a really intriguing, forward-thinking basketball mind…” Wyckoff told the Osceola this week. “My mind was focused on the type of player that we wanted here. We wanted players that were better offensive players. With the addition of bringing in Bill, who had established and honed and coached at all levels with tons of success, an offensive system built for players that were good at offense, could dribble, pass and shoot.”

Ferrara, who was a first-year associate head coach at St. John’s last season, knew right away he was very interested in joining Wyckoff’s staff.

FSU associate head coach Bill Ferrara has revolutionized the Seminoles' offense with his pace-and-space attack in his first season with the program. (Mike Olivella)

“There was never a discussion or anything like that on my end. Every time I had talked to her on the road, I knew she was gonna be a superstar as a head coach, whenever that came and wherever that came,” Ferrara told the Osceola when asked about Wyckoff. “Part of the luxury of my career and my experience is I've gotten the chance to work for a lot of different head coaches at all my stops. I know what a great head coach looks like and then I look at ones that maybe have some shortcomings too and I didn't see any of the flaws with Brooke. I thought that she had basically everything that could propel this place into what I always thought it could be, which is a Final Four contender.”

Ferrara, a two-time graduate from the University of Florida, has been refining his offense since the 2006-07 season when he was a video coordinator at Auburn suddenly thrust into an interim assistant coach role when an assistant abruptly left their job in the middle of the season.

Ferrara, who had no practical coaching experience and no recruiting experience, was tasked by Auburn head coach Nell Fortner and assistant coach Sue Guevara with helping mold an offense that could score a lot of points.

What was created then and has evolved over the years since over stops as an assistant coach at Central Michigan, Hofstra, George Washington, Florida, New Mexico and St. John’s is a fast-paced offense focused on quick possessions highlighted by either layups around the basket or uncontested three-pointers.

“At its core, it's Paul Westhead’s heart-attack attack, Mike D’Antoni’s seven seconds or less (offense) and Vance Walberg’s dribble-drive motion mixed together and made to whatever kind of players we end up recruiting…” Ferrara said of his offense.

The irony that he built this offense after falling in love with basketball by watching the defensive-centric, low-scoring Pat Riley Knicks of the early 1990s is not lost on him.

And yet, its success at each of his stops cannot be denied. Ferrara joined Guevara’s Central Michigan staff ahead of the 2008-09 season and the Chippewas finished fourth nationally with a scoring average of 78.3 points per game, a new program record at that time.

St. John’s scoring average shot up 14 points in Ferrara’s lone season (2021-22) with the program. This season, FSU's scoring is up more than 20 points per game from last year’s 65.3.

“It's a piece of every single head coach I've ever worked for. It's a piece of all the players that I've coached, as well,” Ferrara said of his offense. “Even now, I learn more from (FSU point guard) Jaz Massengill than I do from watching anything or studying anything on TV. It's years and years of trial and error with different players and putting people in different spots.”

That’s not to say the transition to the pace-and-space offense was always easy for the Seminoles. There were definitely some growing pains this past offseason as FSU introduced its new, more wide-open offense.

“What I love about the pace-and-space offense is that it’s simple. It is so simple that what I found is we were trying to install it over the summer that it was complicated. It was hard for our players to grasp in its simplicity,” Wyckoff said. “Bill always says go get a layup, go make a layup, you have the ball, you're trying to go to the basket and score a layup. And if you can't do that, you're looking for someone, because you've drawn multiple defenders, that's open on the three-point line. We want layups and open threes. The players, it took them a minute. That's a lot of freedom and empowerment that they're not used to and also something so simple.

“Us as humans, we want to try to overcomplicate things a lot of times and think, ‘There's gotta be more to it. I'm not really understanding. This is really what you want me to do, stand in this spot and then wait and then when I get the ball, try to go make a layup or find someone on the open three.’ That took a while for them to grasp.”

Ferrara added, “They wanted plays and we were giving them a structure to make plays. It was just a very different mind shift for a lot of them…It was interesting for them to adjust to just go make plays and play fast and play with this sort of spacing and just go. You can't really make mistakes unless you're playing slow or you're clogging it up.”

While those growing pains existed, they had been thoroughly ironed out by the time the season began. The Seminoles crossed the 100-point threshold in each of their two preseason exhibitions and have scored 90-plus points in eight of their first 18 regular-season games this season, including three ACC games.

It definitely helped matters that senior guard Sara Bejedi had familiarity with a similar offensive style from her time with the Finnish National Team. She’s averaging a career-high 10.1 points per game this season and coming off a career-high 26-point game in the Boston College loss.

“This is very familiar to the way that my country plays. It was good for me,” Bejedi said. “Coach Bill knew off the bat that it was going to be a system that fits me perfectly. I was very excited and ready to go with it.”

What definitely helped matters even more was the emergence of Ta’Niya Latson. The true freshman guard was a highly touted recruit out of Fort Lauderdale American Heritage High, earning last year’s Florida Ms. Basketball and the 5A Player of the Year award.

That praise aside, Latson’s immediate impact has surpassed what even the coaches thought it could be. Her 24.7 points per game are fifth-most nationally this season and the most by a freshmen. She had scored 20-plus points in 14 consecutive games before Sunday’s loss at BC, a new NCAA record for a women’s basketball freshman.

Although Latson committed to FSU before Ferrara was on the Seminoles’ staff, the offseason change wound up introducing what is effectively an ideal system for her offensive skill-set.

“This system is perfect for her in terms of she is a player that clearly has the ability to just go score it, but she also is intelligent enough and skilled enough that when defenses collapse or when defenses shift around, she's a willing passer and is able to find her teammates and to facilitate as well so it really worked out perfectly,” Wyckoff said of Latson.

It may not have been a reason for the offensive change, but another positive that can come out of installing a pace-and-space offense is creating a more entertaining product. It can sometimes be a challenge to get fans to attend games and support the FSU women’s basketball team at a level remotely close to the men, even when the women’s team is more competitive as is the case this season.

Although some of this may be unavoidable because of the stigmas attached historically to men’s and women’s basketball, Wyckoff knows a faster paced and more entertaining style of basketball could help drive some more people to the Tucker Civic Center to watch games.

“People want to see scoring and honestly the rules of the game have evolved, the way that games are officiated at all levels – the NBA, you see them changing stuff just even as recently as this year to increase scoring,” Wyckoff said. “Women's basketball I think has done an excellent job. It was years ago now that they changed the way the game was officiated in order to allow freedom of movement and more scoring. That's what people want to see. That’s why you play the game, to watch the ball go in the basket.

“It fits in perfectly with getting people excited about Florida State women's basketball and putting players in a position that makes it exciting also for them to play. We want them to have fun playing. We don't want them to have steam coming out of their ears trying to remember a bunch of plays and slog it out and things like that. Freedom, let’s go score it.”