ON DEALING WITH ADVERSITY. Florida State rises from ACC, personal depths.

Sue Semrau, in her eighth season as coach at FSU, has found a way to win despite a five-guard starting lineup.

"You can develop a real character about you if you really believe and commit to going through pain," says Semrau, whose team rebounded from a 28-point loss Thursday to No. 24 North Carolina State to post a 94-83 triple-overtime win against Virginia Tech two days later. "Obviously, we've been through that."

As Women's Hoops Blog notes, it has been a lot to go through. The players and the coaches didn't let the early expectations or the adversity get to them.

Understandably, expectations for FSU were low. The team was picked eighth in the 11-team ACC, and even that would've been considered an accomplishment in some circles.

"From the outside looking in, I would've thought the same thing," Semrau says. "But we had to find a way to make this work."

While many will cite the Seminoles' upsets of Maryland and North Carolina as the catalyst, Semrau looks back further.

She believes the second game in November, when Linnea Liljestrand, who averaged 3.1 points as a reserve the previous season, scored 20 in a 72-62 win against Florida, was the key.

"Being able to beat our archrival, a team we hadn't beaten in 16 tries, was huge," Semrau says. "The kids began to see the reward."

The result was a school-record 12-game winning streak that's led to the first 20-win season in 14 years.

That's such a refreshing contrast to this.