USF Women's Basketball Pre-Season Report 2023-2024, Part 3
The Foam Dome will have plenty of new players and new expectations this upcoming season in this multi part series looking at both the men's and women's program extensively before the season tips off
The American Athletic Conference announced their preseason coaches poll and honorees leading into the 2023-2024 collegiate basketball season. For USF men’s and women’s basketball, the addition of six new teams in UAB, FAU, North Texas, UTSA, Charlotte, and Rice coming into the fold replacing the departing UCF, Houston, and Cincinnati means there’s plenty of room for parity within the AAC.
In the final part of this Foam Dome series, we will take a look at where the coaches slated the Bulls to finish in the AAC (hint, it’s very good) alongside any pre-season accolades. Additionally, we’ll peek at the schedule where the Bulls will look to stack some resume defining dubs:
USF Women’s Basketball: The Path to Victory
Schedule, at a Glance
As per tradition of late, you can always expect USF women’s basketball to schedule some top name opponents along with some good tune up matches sprinkled in to ensure the wins are stacked and some victories over big name opponents can all but ensure an NCAA Tournament appearance.
This season is no different, with the Bulls tipping off the season against UT-Arlington tonight at the Yuengling Center. They’ll then welcome Stetson and Grambling State for two more home games before going on the road to take on Alabama in Tuscaloosa. They’ll get a match up against UNF in mid November before heading to the Paradise Jam in the U.S Virgin Islands where they’ll take on High Point, Arizona State, and Texas.
The Bulls will return back to Tampa for three home games against Charleston Southern, Gardner-Webb, and a big time matchup against NC State in the Foam Dome. They’ll then wrap up non-conference play against IUPUI and Baylor at the West Palm Classic in late December.
Similarly to the men, the conference slate will feature a mixture of home, away, and home/away matchups against in conference opponents. With the six new additions to the conference, the league has expanded to 18 games (rather than 16 from last year). Each team in the AAC will play five of the 13 conference opponents twice in a home/away game. Then the other eight schools will be played once, with four being at home and the other four being away.
For USF women’s basketball, they’ll play Charlotte, FAU, UNT, and Wichita State at HOME ONLY. The Bulls will travel to UAB, Memphis, Temple, UTSA for AWAY ONLY. Finally, they’ll have a HOME AND AWAY game against ECU, Rice, SMU, Tulane, Tulsa.
Unlike the men’s team, the Bulls will have to face the toughest opponents twice in the season, as ECU, Rice, SMU, Tulane, and Tulsa are ranked between two and seven in the pre-season coaches poll for the upcoming season. Which we will dive into below:
Coaches Poll, Redemption Time
USF was picked to finish first by their fellow coaches in the AAC pre-season poll, receiving 10 of the 14 first place votes. ECU, who was picked 2nd and won the conference tournament last season, received the other 4 first place votes. Rice was nearly unanimously picked 3rd this season, with SMU, Memphis, Tulane, and Tulsa all receiving respectable amounts of votes in the Poll.
There is a considerable drop off between 7th place Tulsa (104 points) and 8th place UTSA (75 points), which might showcase the top heavy quality of the AAC this season, and for USF that means they will have to bring their A game the entire season.
The full poll is below:
Additionally, the AAC coaches named Sammie Puisis to Preseason All-Conference First Team, the only Bull to receive any pre-season accolade thus far. ECU’s Danae McNeal was selected for conference player of the year and was unanimously selected to All-Conference First Team.
That certainly won’t add any fire under the teams’ butts this year…
#PackTheFoamDome this season folks, these teams are going to be fun.