Basketball excitement is building at Florida Gulf Coast University as both the men’s and women’s teams have kicked off their preseason practices at Alico Arena. Monday marked the first day of practice for the women’s team under the leadership of their new head coach, Raina Harmon.<\/p>\n
“For the last couple of weeks I keep asking myself, every time we get off the floor, what is happening to the time?” said Harmon. “Right? Cause we’ve been restricted to four hours. And now that we have, we open up with 20 this week, I felt like, ah I can kind of slow down, have a lot more teaching points today. I thought they had great communication and great effort on day number one.”<\/p>\n
Harmon brings a new energy to the FGCU women’s basketball program, which has seen three head coaches in the past year.<\/p>\n
“I just think Raina brings a lively attitude,” said Nay Staton. “Just wanting us to be free and play to the best of our ability and play to our strengths. That was really important as to why I stayed.”<\/p>\n
[Placeholder for visual image of the women’s basketball team practicing]<\/p>\n
On the men’s side, the team is entering its fourth year under head coach Pat Chambers. Last season, a late surge in conference play helped the Eagles secure a third-place finish, host a conference tournament game, and reach the semifinals of the College Basketball Invitational.<\/p>\n
“We got to create the best habits that we can create heading into November,” said Chambers. “And it’s a slow, tedious it’s like watching grass grow. But for these guys anyway. For me? It’s a joy I love it!”<\/p>\n
With both teams eagerly preparing for the upcoming season, FGCU fans can look forward to an exciting year of basketball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Basketball excitement is building at Florida Gulf Coast University as both the men’s and women’s teams have kicked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,111210,111211,398,400,401,99],"class_list":["post-190714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-fgcu","tag-fgcu-men","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}