Photo by Kendall Bulkiewicz | The Crow’s Nest
By Kendall Bulkiewicz
USF set a new home attendance record with 9,821 fans in the stands, the second-largest crowd for a regular-season women’s basketball game in Florida history on Education Day.
This feat adds to USF’s impressive non-conference home record, now standing at 63-5 since the 2014-15 season. The ending score for the game came to 62-43.
Sophomore guard Vittoria Blasigh led the Bulls with 13 points, shooting five from the field, including one from beyond the arc and two from the free-throw line in 28 minutes. Junior forward Carla Brito contributed 11 points, scoring five from the field and one from the free-throw line in 31 minutes.
Other standout performances included graduate student forward Ines Piper, who added eight points in 20 minutes, making three from the field and two from the charity stripe. Freshman guard Raina Tomasicka also had a solid showing, scoring seven points in just 11 minutes, shooting three from the field, including one from three-point range.
The game was determined midway through the third quarter when the Bulls went on a 15-2 run, with Brito scoring seven points during the stretch. Graduate guard Mama Dembele added four points, helping USF sail to victory. Dembele also moved closer to a career milestone, needing just one more assist to reach 500 for her career.
Coach Jose Fernandez reflected on the event’s success and support. “There are a lot of people involved in our athletics department who are assisting with this event, packing bags, and putting bags on seats. There’s a lot of things and a lot of people to thank behind the scenes that people don’t see to make something like this happen,” Fernandez said.
He also highlighted the event’s impact on the community, saying, “hopefully some of these kids go home and these families talk to their parents that they had a great time, and they want to come back and also think, ‘hey, you know what? I want to be a basketball player one day. You know where I want to study? I want to study at the University of South Florida.’”
The Yuengling Center’s annual Education Day game provides thousands of elementary students in the area a memorable field trip experience. Children from 85 local schools were present and received gift bags filled with pom poms and scholastic activity books from USF athletes. The activity book also includes a wordsearch, a roster of the women’s team, and a blank page for students to get autographs.
When discussing the team’s performance, Coach Fernandez noted the importance of adjustments. “We just needed to find different ways to speed the game up and play a little differently, and that’s what we did. No excuses, we got to be a lot better than how we played today,” Fernandez said.
The coach also praised the pressure defense in the second half. “We just needed to do something different to speed up the pace … and have them take some shots that they’re not all used to taking in practice,” Fernandez said. “We turned them over 26, 28 times and scored 40 points off turnovers.”
Up next, the Bulls will face the defending national champions, South Carolina, on Sunday, Dec. 15, in Columbia, South Carolina. The game is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. and will air live on the SEC Network.
