TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Brooke Wyckoff remembers the first time she watched Ta’Niya Latson play. Not in person at a gym. But on a small cell phone screen, a highlight video recorded thousands of miles and an ocean away.
Then a middle school player with unique explosiveness but also a rugged toughness, Latson had an unrelenting drive to the basket, aggressiveness and athleticism. Though Latson was living in Hawaii at the time, Wyckoff knew: “We have to find a way to offer her.”
Now, some seven years later, Latson is the face of Wyckoff’s Florida State women’s college basketball team and one of the most decorated players in school history. Despite her many accomplishments — All-American as a freshman; the nation’s leading scorer this season as a junior — Latson remains perhaps the most unheralded player in the country.
Would she like more people to watch her play and get to know her game? Without question. Does she often ask herself what more she could do? Absolutely. But Latson finds solace in the cold, hard numbers.
“I’m just thankful that I am in the position that I am in,” Latson told ESPN. “Stats don’t lie, and they can’t deny my stats.”
So she keeps going, creating a list of goals before each game, whether it’s how many points she wants to score, or how many assists she wants to dish, or how she can be a better leader for her teammates. It’s a way to not only challenge herself, but also keep reminding people of the same thing over and over.
“Proving who she is,” teammate Makayla Timpson says. “She’s just like, ‘Y’all keep sleeping, but you’ll see what I’m doing.'”
TO UNDERSTAND WHAT makes Latson the player she is today, the story begins back in Hawaii. Her dad served in the Army, so she and her six siblings moved around quite often. This not only fostered her ability to adjust to different circumstances, but also provided the type of discipline and work ethic required to hone her growing basketball skill set.
She lived in Hawaii during middle school and quickly realized that she could have a future in basketball. But she and her dad knew she needed more than the competition she got playing against girls her own age.
Her dad would take her to the Army base so she could play pickup games against the men there. Latson describes the physicality with which they played, forcing her to use more of her athleticism to find ways to get to the basket without getting hit.
“It made me the player that I am,” Latson said. “They’re super tough. The competition is a physical game in Hawaii. It made me tough, and I feel like that’s why my work ethic is the way it is.”
Wyckoff wasn’t the only coach who took notice. Prentice Beverly, a longtime national evaluator of girls’ basketball players, was covering an event in Hawaii when he first spotted Latson as a seventh grader. “She was putting up 60 and I was like, ‘Who is this?'” Beverly told ESPN. “Nobody had ever heard of her or seen her before, but she was destroying people.”
When Latson was in middle school, Beverly started an inaugural event called “BallN Across Borders.” Girls’ basketball stars from across the United States played against stars from Canada. Latson, JuJu Watkins of USC, Latson’s future Florida State teammate O’Mariah Gordon and Jada Williams of Arizona all played on the same team in 2017.
“We really didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into, but it was a great game and Ta’Niya ended up winning MVP,” Gordon said. “It was super fun.”
Latson picked up one more crucial thing during her time in Hawaii: her No. 00 jersey. Her AAU coach in Hawaii once said to her, “You play like an assassin, like James Bond 007. You should wear double zero.”
“That’s where that fearless mindset comes from,” Latson said. “I try to attack every game just like that. Like James Bond.”
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Ta’Niya Latson makes a nice move for the lay-in
Ta’Niya Latson makes a nice move for the lay-in
IF HAWAII TOUGHENED Latson up, her next move to Atlanta humbled her. Latson played her high school basketball at Westlake, a powerhouse that also featured Raven Johnson (now at South Carolina) and Latson’s future Florida State teammate Brianna Turnage. The game in Atlanta was completely different from what she was used to — more wide-open, more fast-paced. Plus, for the first time in her life, Latson was not the best player on her team.
Her sophomore year, without much in the way of recruiting fanfare, she took an unofficial visit to Florida State with Johnson and Turnage. Wyckoff, a Florida State assistant at the time, had started building a relationship with Latson soon after watching the highlight footage on her cell phone. The two quickly bonded, and that bond grew deeper during the visit.
Latson felt at ease talking with Wyckoff and felt a powerful connection to the campus and the players on the team. She remembers then-head coach Sue Semrau watching her go one-on-one against Turnage, and it left such an impression that the staff offered Latson a scholarship on the spot.
Latson knew right then she wanted to play for Florida State. But there would soon be more change. Before her senior year, she moved to South Florida with her mom and three siblings to help care for an ailing family member.
She ended up at American Heritage School, a place that would allow her to fine-tune her jump shot and made her a perfect fit for the pressure defense that coach Greg Farias employed. Latson immediately bought into the team’s defensive style, and before long, Farias said, “girls couldn’t dribble past half court because she was stripping them every time.”
If Hawaii taught her toughness and Atlanta taught her how to play with an all-star cast, South Florida taught her how to take the leading role. Latson became the No. 1 shooting guard nationally in the class of 2022 and the first McDonald’s All American in American Heritage girls’ basketball history.
“She was so coachable, and humble,” Farias told ESPN. “People don’t realize that before she came to play for me, she played on all these other teams that had superstars. We had some good players, but nothing like that. So she started thriving then, averaging 28 points a game, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. She had to do everything: She had to score, she had to defend. I had to tell her, ‘This is your team.’ She would always say, ‘I got you coach.'”
The style she played in her senior year closely mirrored the style Florida State plays, allowing her to get downhill and into the lane, while forcing stops to create offense on the defensive end. But before Latson arrived on campus, Semrau announced in March 2022 she was retiring. One of her first calls was to Latson, not only to deliver the news, but also to reassure Latson that Wyckoff was the leading candidate to succeed her.
“We had a really good relationship, and I knew when she took the head coach job, I would stay,” Latson said of Wyckoff.
“Obviously, she took a chance,” Wyckoff said. “I’m a brand-new head coach. I think for anyone, they would ponder it and say, ‘Is this what I really want?’ She trusted, and I’m really thankful.”
BEFORE THS SEASON started, Latson called a meeting with Wyckoff. In her first two seasons at Florida State, Latson had hit one accomplishment after another. As a freshman, Latson set the ACC single-season freshman scoring record with 659 total points, led all freshmen in the country in scoring (21.3 points per game) and won ACC Rookie of the Year.
As a sophomore, she again made the All-ACC first team after averaging 21.4 points per game and became the second Florida State player in school history to score more than 700 points in a season, with 705.
Latson felt she could do more as a junior. So she sat Wyckoff down and asked her a question: “I want to be ACC Player of the Year. Will you coach me to that?”
“That hunger that sets her apart, the drive that she has, was there,” Wyckoff said. “This is a kid that’s done so much in her first two years. She can just keep doing those things and be great, but she wanted more. When Ta’Niya has a goal and objective, she’s one of the best I’ve ever seen of being able to go and do what she puts her mind to.”
Latson knew to even be in the conversation, she would have to lead the nation in scoring. But Wyckoff knew Latson had to do much more than score.
“You’ve got to impact other parts of the game,” Wyckoff said. “We looked at what the ACC Players of the Year in the past were doing statistically. What are people looking at when you’re talking about the player of the year? That’s where the double-doubles, the triple-doubles, the assists, the defense is coming into play, the steals she’s getting, to really try to make a case for that award.”
But maybe more than that, Florida State would have to win at a high level — particularly in a conference that also features Hannah Hidalgo at Notre Dame (the sophomore won ACC Player of the Year on Tuesday, as well as the league’s defensive player of the year). In Latson’s first two seasons at Florida State, the Seminoles lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament and spent just a handful of weeks ranked in the AP Top 25.
Latson entered this season wanting to change that. She notched her first career double-double, with 34 points and a career-high 10 assists against NC Central in the fifth game of the season. Then against Gonzaga, she had her first career triple-double, with 24 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists. She reset her own career high in scoring first against Tennessee (38 points), then against SMU (39), then against Virginia Tech (40), tying the program record for points in a game.
“She doesn’t let anyone stop her, no matter the game plan,” Timpson said. “She finds a way to score. She’s got great basketball IQ. She knows when to drive down in the lane, when to dish it off, when to shoot her midrange shot, when to shoot the 3.”
“That’s where that fearless mindset comes from. I try to attack every game just like that. Like James Bond.”
Ta’Niya Latson, who said an AAU coach told her to wear double zero because she plays like an assassin, like 007
In a critical game against ranked North Carolina in January, Latson showed off what makes her so hard to defend. With the score tied at 84 and 3.5 seconds left, the Seminoles wanted to get the ball into Latson. They had practiced this specific end-of-game situation for a moment like this.
Sydney Bowles bounced the baseline pass to Latson on the right wing. Two defenders immediately swarmed her. Latson went to her right and made like she was about to pull up to shoot. Both defenders jumped into the air before Latson pulled it down to her left, dribbled toward the basket and laid it in with no time left.
“That’s something I always dreamt of,” Latson said. “I knew they were going to overplay me and send a lot of bodies at me. So I had to pump-fake, get them in the air and blow by them and then get to the basket. That’s my bread and butter, and I knew I had to have the pull, the poise and the composure to finish the layup.”
In an upset win over Hidalgo and Notre Dame last week, Latson once again showed why she is so good driving into the lane, taking over the fourth quarter with 13 of her 23 points in the final five minutes of the game. That game also pushed her over the 2,000-point mark in her career; she’s just the third player in ACC history to reach that mark in their first three seasons.
“Her athleticism and her speed, but then her body control when she’s in the air, it’s like something that you see in the elite ones,” Wyckoff said. “Or get the ball out of the reach of someone that’s going to block it and still score over them. Before she takes off and she’s got the ball in her hand, her ability to read in a millisecond where the defense is coming from and just cleanly step around like human cone drills in tiny, tight spaces is also at an elite level.”
Latson leads the nation in scoring (25.4 PPG) and ranks fourth in the country in fouls drawn, another indicator of how tough it is to defend her when she is coming downhill and into the lane. She has improved in every statistical category as well, averaging career highs in scoring, assists, steals and field goal percentage. Oftentimes, she first looks at her assists in the box score.
“I feel like I’m growing into my leadership role and that’s been a big difference,” Latson said. “Getting my teammates involved, averaging more assists, has always been a goal of mine.”
That’s clear in the chemistry she has developed with Gordon and Timpson, who had 17 rebounds against the Irish. No trio has averaged more points this season. Timpson, a potential WNBA first-round pick, is the only player in the country averaging more than 17 points, 10 rebounds and 3 blocks per game. She reset the single-season school record for blocks with 91.
Despite all the improvements this year, Latson’s biggest goal remains on the horizon. “Winning a national championship. That’s what I have to have left to accomplish,” she said.
That could happen this season or next, as Latson has ruled out leaving school early to enter the WNBA draft.
“I feel like I still have room to grow, and I’m in no rush, no rush at all,” Latson said. “I want to get my degree and finish out the greatness that I’ve accomplished here at Florida State.”
The Seminoles (23-7) head into this week’s ACC tournament as the No. 4 seed, and then will more than likely have to go on the road for the opening NCAA tournament rounds. (They are currently projected as a 6-seed in ESPN’s Bracketology.) Though the season has had its share of ups and downs, they showed late in the year they are capable of playing with — and beating — the best.
Latson is the biggest reason why. Wyckoff laughed when asked if this is what she envisioned all those years ago, when she watched Latson for the first time on her cell phone.
“You always hope for the best. You always believe that anything’s possible, and that’s what you talk about with them,” Wyckoff said. “To see somebody continue to exceed any expectation or vision is something so special that I’m just so glad to be a part of. It’s been such a fun ride.”
