Back in the sunlight
Florida State’s Brooke Wyckoff returns to Sun’s Mohegan Sun Arena
Florida State women’s basketball coach Brooke Wyckoff had never played in a casino, let alone stepped foot in one until the Connecticut Sun franchise moved into Mohegan Sun Arena in 2003.
It was at Mohegan where the former star forward learned what it looked like to be an elite WNBA player. It was in Uncasville that she felt Connecticut’s passion for women’s basketball when she drained a clutch buzzer-beater in the WNBA Finals. And it was where she made lifelong friendships with some of the sport’s all-time greats.
It’s also the same arena where she saw Hootie & and the Blowfish, Destiny’s Child and Sarah McLachlan in between the Sun’s training camp schedule during the spring.
“It was something like I’d never seen before,” Wyckoff said of her first impression of Mohegan Sun. “It was an amazing kind of casino. I mean, it was beautiful. … It was all just state-of-art and really got you excited about being a part of the Connecticut Sun organization because it just seemed like everything was so well-run and they wanted to do everything at an elite level as a business and for the team. It was exciting.”
On Sunday, Wyckoff returns to Mohegan Sun Arena for the first time as a head coach. She’ll lead her alma matter against UConn women’s basketball in the Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase (1 p.m., ESPN).
“I’m very excited,” she said. “I just love going there. It’s a great basketball atmosphere and now as a head coach, it’s like, ‘Wow.’”
Wyckoff, originally from Ohio, had a historic career in Tallahassee. She was on longtime coach Sue Semrau’s first team in 1997 and set the program’s singleseason record with 80 blocks as a freshman.
By her senior year, she earned All-America honors and led FSU to its first winning season in nine years. Wyckoff started all 109 games she played in and finished her collegiate career averaging 12.4 points and 7.4 rebounds per game.
She remains No. 2 on the program’s all-time list with 209 career blocks.
In 2001, she was drafted by the Orlando Miracle in the second round of the WNBA Draft.
She played for two years in Orlando, before the franchise was purchased by the Mohegan Tribe and relocated 1,200 miles north to Uncasville. The team left sunny central Florida for the cold, small southeast corner of Connecticut.
“When we got there, they really made it plain and clear to us, like, ‘Look, this is serious. We’re here to be the best. We’re here to get to the finals. We’re here to win a championship.’ So, then you start to get excited,” Wyckoff said. “Then it really became about the basketball and the team and really, they created an environment where we could focus on being a great basketball team.”
She added with a laugh: “And sometimes, you know, in bigger cities or things like that there’s a lot of distractions. And in Uncasville in Connecticut and Groton, Connecticut, where we were living, there’s not too many. You can really focus on the basketball. And also, just bonding with your team.”
It didn’t take long for the franchise to thrive in Connecticut.
In the Sun’s first season in 2003, under former head coach Mike Thibault, it finished with an 18-16 record and reached the Eastern Conference Finals. It was the first playoff appearance in franchise history, including its time in Orlando. Wyckoff played in all 34 games that year with 22 starts.
With such quick success in a state already fully embracing women’s basketball, the Sun soon developed its own loyal fan base.
“We had a really great fan base from the beginning,” Wyckoff said. “I feel like you could tell that they were really educated fans in terms of they knew what women’s basketball was and they were excited about it.”
The next season, which Wyckoff didn’t play because of an injury, the team reached the WNBA Finals, falling to Seattle.
Connecticut reached the Finals again in 2005.
In front of a Mohegan Sun home crowd, it was Wyckoff ’s buzzer-beater 3-pointer against the nowdefunct Sacramento Monarchs that pushed Game 2 into overtime and gave Connecticut its lone win in its 3-1 Finals loss.
“I mean, that is the ultimate,” Wyckoff said. “I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that cool or impactful in my career before or after. That was so fun and again it was just, gosh, such an awesome atmosphere. Just the fans were amazing and to be able to make that shot to then go into overtime and win. Wow, like those are the moments you dream about.”
Wyckoff ’s time in Uncasville only lasted those three seasons before she was drafted by the Chicago Sky in the 2006 WNBA Expansion Draft.
She played for three more years before an ACL injury forced her to retire in 2009.
Wyckoff credits playing alongside both UConn and women’s basketball greats such as Rebecca Lobo, Nykesha Sales, Lindsay Whalen, Asjha Jones and Sylvia Fowles as how she learned what it took to become an elite player. Whether it was barbecues at their apartments, day trips to Mystic or even driving to Providence, Wyckoff remembers how she close she got to her former teammates and how that made them successful out on the court.
“They were elite in everything they did,” Wyckoff said. “They were true professionals, and it wasn’t just talent. It was so much more than that and that’s what I learned … I just really loved being able to see that up close and learn from it and try to emulate it. And (I) still draw on those experiences with them today as a coach.”
Fast forward to 2011. Wyckoff returned to Tallahassee to join Semrau’s staff as an assistant coach focused on defense, working with post players and recruiting.
Seven years later, she was promoted to associate head coach on May 1, 2018.
When Semrau took a single-season leave of absence in 2020-21 to take care of her mom, Wyckoff took over as the team’s interim head coach.
Wyckoff finished her head coaching debut with a 10-9 overall record as the team finished tied for fourth in the ACC and made it to the first round of the NCAA Tournament. With a 69-61 win over Virginia on Dec 13, 2020, she became FSU’s first head coach to win their ACC coaching debut.
Wyckoff returned to her associate head coach role in 2021-22 when Semrau returned.
However, when Semrau, the program’s winningest coach, retired in March 2022, Wyckoff was promoted to full-time head coach.
“When I was playing, I’d never dream that I would be a head coach one day and here I am,” Wyckoff said.
While it’s not the career path she could have imagined for herself, coaching has impacted Wyckoff in ways she never thought it could. And for that, she’s grateful.
“It’s actually made my playing (career) mean that much more to me because now I have a chance to coach and to see the other side of everything,” she said. “And it’s really really gratifying. I love it even more than I loved playing. I mean, I really loved playing, but coaching is so much about other people. It’s about how you pour into a group of players every day. How do you get them ready? How you can help them on their journey, and I love that aspect of it.”