The Sunshine State is a hoops mecca when the weather gets cold.

Florida is a tropical college basketball paradise during the holiday months, and that won’t change this hoops season as an eight-strong contingent of women’s college basketball teams will descend upon Hertz Arena in Estero, Florida for the annual Gulf Coast Showcase. 

All-Americans Caitlin Clark and Ayoka Lee were among the many stars that suited up for last year’s edition of the event, and numerous All-America hopefuls will be in this year’s field, too, granting an early look at some of the names who could make major differences in March and beyond. 

Here’s a look ahead at five of the top things you need to know ahead of the Gulf Coast Showcase, scheduled to take place Nov. 29-Dec. 1 and to be streamed live and exclusively on FloHoops:

Time For A Longhorn Leap?

It took five years for Vic Schaefer to turn Mississippi State from a program that struggled in the mighty Southeastern Conference to a national power, as it was then that the Bulldogs made the first of what would end up being back-to-back appearances in the national championship game in 2017. 

Lo and behold, the 2024-25 season is Schaefer’s fifth coaching Texas — and the Longhorns are now playing in a league that he knows all too well. 

UT has largely been excellent under Schaefer, making the Elite Eight three times while winning 33 games last season heavily thanks to the emergence of All-American Madison Booker, who won the Cheryl Miller Award as the national small forward of the year and became the first freshman to ever win the Big 12 Conference Player of the Year award. 

Still, a run back to the Final Four for the first time since 2003 has evaded the Longhorns for the time being. That could easily change this year, and it would arguably be a disappointing season for UT if it wasn’t back in the national semifinals. 

Texas is the No. 4-ranked team in the Associated Press’ Preseason Top 25 poll, making it one of seven SEC teams in the rankings and one of four in the top 10. It will play a loaded schedule that should prep it well for a potential deep NCAA Tournament run — with two showdowns against No. 1 South Carolina being already among the season’s most anticipated games — and will be the favorite to take the Gulf Coast Showcase title, with the Longhorns’ time in Florida starting against New Mexico State. 

With Booker, a returning Rori Harmon from injury and a host of other weapons, this could be the year that Texas makes the jump back up to the national elite. The Gulf Coast Showcase bracket, with that in mind, could act as a preview of what’s to come in March for the Longhorns.

Will WVU Break Through?

The flip side of the exodus of Texas (and Oklahoma) from the Big 12 to the SEC is that it has opened up a power vacuum at the top of the former’s league standings.

OU and UT finished Nos. 1 and 2 in the Big 12 a season ago, and as evidenced by the conference’s preseason coaches’ poll for this year — which saw four different teams earn first-place votes — the question of who the league favorite is now without the Sooners and Longhorns in the picture is anyone’s guess, with top-two preseason squads Kansas State and Iowa State separated by just two points in the voting.

One of those teams who received a first-place vote was West Virginia, and it was deserved kudos for a Mountaineers program that’s often been consistently stout, though never quite a world-beater.

WVU has made the second round of the NCAA Tournament 12 times but the Sweet 16 only once, missing out on the second weekend again last season when it was matched up with Caitlin Clark and Iowa and hung tough while down just two points at the half, though WVU ultimately fell to the box-office Hawkeyes.

Unlike Iowa, however, WVU didn’t lose its superstar for this season. Senior guard JJ Quinerly — the reigning Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year — is a dark-horse First Team All-America candidate, being one of just three players who were unanimously named to this year’s Preseason All-Big 12 Team while also being a reigning finalist for the Ann Meyers Drysdale Award, given to the nation’s best shooting guard. 

The No. 16 Mountaineers return four starters while senior Zya Nugent, who missed all of last year due to injury, was a bucket at Stephen F. Austin during her last season played in 2021-22 (12.9 points per game), all of which makes WVU a sneaky pick to hold the Gulf Coast Showcase championship aloft at the event’s end.

Get To Know Knudsen

Never heard of Elyce Knudsen? That’s OK, because by the end of the Gulf Coast Showcase, the chances are that you’ll be well aware of what the Illinois State grad transfer brings to the hardwood after four prior years of annihilating competition at the Division III level.

The in-state transfer comes to ISU as D-I’s second-ranked active player in career points (2,472), all of which were scored during a monster four years at D-III Millikin. The winner of the 2023 Jostens Trophy as the nation’s top player in D-III, Knudsen was a four-time All-American who averaged 22.6 points per game during her career with the Big Blue, tallying a career high 26.6 points per night a season ago — the second-most in D-III. 

Knudsen wrapped up her Millikin stint as the program’s all-time leading scorer, with the caveat that she only played in 13 games her freshman year due to the COVID-19-impacted 2020-21 season, as well. She had a 41-point game last year plus was a pair of rebounds away from a 25-point triple-double (with 10 assists), too.

What’s it all mean for the Redbirds? It means that they could suddenly have a dangerous new weapon added to a program that won 22 games last season and has had no problem developing talent from other levels, like when D-II transfer Paige Robinson only needed one season in Normal to turn into the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year and a WNBA Draft pick of the Dallas Wings in 2023.

High Hopes At High Point

Want to put your stock into watching a fun mid-major squad at the Gulf Coast Showcase? Keep an eye on High Point, then, which is the Big South Conference’s reigning and defending regular-season champion and was picked to win the league in preseason for the fourth straight year.

Though the Panthers went 14-2 in conference play last season and won 20 games overall, they missed out on the NCAA Tournament as they were upset in the Big South tourney by Presbyterian. They made the WBIT instead, losing to Virginia to close their season.

Two starters and seven letter winners are back for HPU in 2024-25, the most notable returner of which is Nakyah Terrell after a Big South Second Team All-Conference selection last year. Some of the newcomers coming into the program may be what really make the Panthers go, however, as Eastern Washington transfer Jaleesa Lawrence was a Second Team All-Big Sky Conference pick last season for an Eagles squad that made the NCAA Tournament and D-II transfer Lauren Scott averaged 16.3 points per game at that level last season.

HPU will have a tough game to start things out in the Gulf South Showcase as it opens up its slate against nationally-ranked West Virginia, but the Panthers — with hopes to make it to the NCAA tourney for just the second time in their history as a D-I school — will get plenty of experience against top competition in The Sunshine State to prep them for being the team to beat in the Big South.

Changes At Santa Clara

As the winner of 25 games last year — and the team that would’ve been the champion of the West Coast Conference had Gonzaga not existed — Santa Clara will have some question marks that it will have to figure out before the Gulf Coast Showcase.

Two-time All-WCC First Team guard Tess Heal has transferred to Stanford, leaving the Broncos without the heart and soul of a group that made it to the WBIT a season ago, and Bill Carr stepped down as head coach in mid-October in a surprise resignation that suddenly put assistant Michael Floyd in as interim boss. Oh, and Washington State and Oregon State have joined the WCC this season following the shrinking of the Pac-12 Conference, too, adding some extra pedigree to what was already a strong mid-major league.

That’s all to say that Santa Clara has its work cut out for itself this season with a new-look team and a potentially unknown identity, but there are things to like regardless about the Broncos.

All-WCC First Team forward Olivia Pollerd returns as one of the country’s most lethal sharpshooters, finishing eighth in the nation with 95 3-pointers and 11th in 3-point percentage with a 43.2% clip from beyond the arc. Grad transfer Kaya Ingram led Cornell in scoring last season, too, and both guard Hannah Rapp and forward Irena Korolenko arrive as newcomers to the program with past experience starting elsewhere at Saint Mary’s and Seattle, respectively.

The Broncos get Butler first at the Gulf Coast Showcase in what could be one of the more underrated games on the event’s opening day, considering that both Pollerd and Bulldogs guard Jordan Meulemans (42.4% from 3 in 2023-24) were both top-15 3-point shooters nationally.

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