Florida Southern women’s basketball has gone through its fair share of ebbs and flows throughout its 42 year history, including eight head coaches. Despite some hard times, the program has remained strong throughout its history with an overall program record of 788-394, equivalent to a 0.667 winning percentage.
The women’s basketball team hired a familiar face as the new head coach in the 2022-2023 season in Megan Dzikas who has played a pivotal role in the programs success over the past decade as a player and an assistant. As a player Dzikas was best known for her offensive skill set, finishing her career with the Mocs at 12th in career points and second in career assists.
In Dzikas’ playing career she won awards, and most importantly won basketball games, going 87-31 in her playing career, including a season with the Mocs where they went 24-7 en route to finishing as the South Regional runner-up. Dzikas rejoined the Mocs as an assistant in the 2019-2020 season where the Mocs finished with a record of 19-11 before the season abruptly ended due to the pandemic.
Dzikas remained an assistant with the Mocs until the 2022 season, when she became the head coach of a team in need of a new direction and leadership with many roster spots opening up at the end of the season. In her first year at the helm, Dzikas helped the Mocs stay afloat as they finished with a record of 15-14 and advanced to the second round of the conference tournament.
The team lost a number of players, including a major contributor in star center Ashley Shell who many wondered if she could be replaced and if the team would be able to still be competitive with a roster that would be full of many new players. One of the newcomers is center Sarah Lange who had a strong start to the season after transferring from California Baptist, playing a major role in the Mocs first three wins of the year.
“[Sarah Lange] has helped tremendously for us with the loss of Ashley Shell last year, she’s filled those shoes pretty well. We’ve always wanted to establish our inside game first and Sarah has done a really good job at coming in and playing that role,” Dzikas said.
With Lange’s performances through the first two games, she earned conference player of the week honors before being sidelined with an injury following the second game of the season in a win against Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras.
Despite the loss of Lange, the Mocs rallied, maintaining their undefeated record while traveling to Winter Park, Florida for the Rollins Classic and facing off against strong teams, and programs, in Winston-Salem State University and Belmont Abbey College. The Mocs continued to dominate on the glass, out rebounding opponents by nearly double digits through the first three games and averaging over 70 points per game over the five game win streak.
“We put the target on our backs when we went 5-0, people are going to come after us. We’re going to get everyone’s best game because we’re Florida Southern women’s basketball. We’re a history of winning, we’re gonna get everybody’s best game no matter what,” said Dzikas.
However, once conference play began the Mocs began to stumble, falling to an extremely strong Tampa team then failing to regain their footing in their next two matchups, starting 0-3 in conference play. With the start of conference play, the Mocs began to struggle from the field, failing to shoot above 30% in two of the three games.
“We just got to have the mentality of keep shooting, you know, you’re not going to miss any shots if you don’t take the wide open shots. I have all the confidence in my players, take the open shot, and that’s what I want them to do,” Dzikas said.
Dzikas and the Mocs have a break from conference play in their upcoming matchups against the University of Illinois Springfield and Lewis University in the Century Retail Christmas Classic, where the Mocs will look to improve their 1-2 record at home.
“I want us to protect home court a little better, I think this is a great opportunity coming up in our Christmas tournament [with] some good non-conference teams in Illinois Springfield and Lewis who made the tournament last year,” said Dzikas.
Despite some of the recent shortcomings, Dzikas has coached Florida Southern women’s basketball to the third best improvement in winning percentage in a head coach’s first to second season so far.
Dzikas, and the Mocs, will look to continue to build off their historic start at the Century Christmas Classic Dec. 15th, and will return to conference play Dec. 30th at home against 4-5 Palm Beach Atlantic University.