With a 'winner's mentality,' Ta'Niya Latson quick to close on 1,000 points
Listening to Ta’Niya Latson list off some of her goals for her sophomore season, it sounds more like she’s down the end of the bench and not the ACC’s player of the year as a freshman.
Get to the basket. Build a consistent shot. Get her teammates more involved. Improve as a leader in year 2 at Florida State.
And, yes, she’s closing on 1,000 career points faster than anyone who has ever worn garnet and gold.
“Going into this season, my sophomore season, I knew that was a goal of mine and I wanted to achieve it,” Latson said on Wednesday afternoon. “I'm not looking to go score 1,000 points. Next game I'm looking to just go win the game honestly and just be myself. But it would mean a lot and, yeah, I'm just blessed to be in that position.”
Latson has scored 975 points, averaging 21.2 points per game, going into Thursday’s home game with North Carolina (6 p.m., live stream on ACC Network Extra). She is poised to become just the 40th player in FSU women’s basketball history to reach the milestone and could do it in game No. 47, which would be one faster than what FSU all-time leading scorer Sue Galkantas accomplished (Galkantas had 2,323 career points).
At the rate Latson is going? There’s no telling what she can accomplish. While focused on wins, she has a scoring average that is nearly two points better than Galkantas (19.4 from 1981-84) and significantly better than some of FSU’s recent stars (Shakayla Thomas is second all-time on FSU’s list with 1,971 points but an average of 14.6 points per game).
Coach Brooke Wyckoff is 16th on FSU’s all-time list with 1,350 points, averaging 12.4 points in her career from 1998-01. And she’s coached recent 1,000-point scorers like Thomas, Natasha Howard, Alexa Deluzio, Nicki Ekhomu, Ivey Slaughter and Nausia Woolfolk.
“You got to be special and elite and, to do it at the rate that Ta'Niya has done it, it's otherworldly,” Wyckoff said. “I've never coached a player like Ta'Niya. I've played with some players like Ta'Niya in the WNBA. But just to be able to see the day-in and day-out and the mentality of a player like her. That's what it is: It's a mentality. You have to have the talent. She has it. But talent isn't enough to do the types of things she's doing.
“It's a mentality. It's a winner's mentality of not feeling and not allowing pressure to get to her and just an ability to be herself, to be self-aware and to use her talents to the utmost. That's special. It's just different. And I sure didn't have it. I got to 1,000. I don't know how. It took a while.”
What makes Latson special is that she can score by slashing to the rim, hitting contested mid-range jumpers or making a 3-pointer. Foul her? She’s making opponents pay, whether it’s intentional or not, by making 89 percent of her free-throw attempts.
Latson has done it with consistency, scoring in double figures in 29 of 31 games her freshman year as well as 13 of 15 games this season. She has scored 30 points in victories over Georgia Tech and Wake Forest as well as 30 in an overtime loss at top-5 NC State.
Her 3-point shooting percentage is low, just 12 of 44 (27.3 percent), but she also has shown the ability to drill them in bunches (3 of 5 vs. Georgia Tech).
“I feel like the parts that I'm flourishing in right now is just getting to the basket and being myself,” Latson said. “Getting my teammates involved more, that was one of my goals this year was just to be more of a playmaker for my team. And I feel like I am focusing on just building a consistent shot. That's always been a goal of mine.”
Latson has 11 career 30-point games, matching Galkantas’ school record. According to research by ESPN.com, it's the second most 30-point games in a player's first 50 career games. The only woman with more? Iowa star Caitlin Clark
What’s perhaps not discussed is how good she is on the defensive end, all while the on-court time has added up to more than 31 minutes per game since the ACC schedule began on Dec. 29.
“Ta'Niya has always been a good defender,” Wyckoff said. “She's always been a really good on-ball defender, obviously super athletic. ... And also just with the role that Ta'Niya has, the load that she carries offensively, she has to do a lot to be able to give that kind of effort on the defensive end as well. It's asking a lot and she's committed to doing it. So it's just her overall mentality to become a better team defender and really stay engaged on that end when it's tiring and draining.”
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