South Carolina women's basketball is searching for its post-Freshies identity

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The “Freshies,” South Carolina’s 2019 signing class of Aliyah Boston, Zia Cooke, Brea Beal, Laeticia Amihere, and Olivia Thompson (plus 2018 signee Victaria Saxton), cast a long shadow. 

They are by far the most accomplished group in program history, winning a national championship, making three Final Fours, and winning six combined SEC regular season or tournament titles. Boston, who was the unanimous WNBA Rookie of the Year, was the most decorated player in program history.

The Freshies also had big personalities to match their accomplishments. Boston was constantly talking. Cooke was the explosive highlight machine. Beal was expressionless in games but coached up her teammates in practice.

For three years incoming players knew their job was to fit into the Freshies’ team. Now those same players are tasked with establishing the Gamecocks’ new identity.

“This is a totally different group,” Dawn Staley said. “The slate is wiped clean. This is all about this particular group. It’s not a bad thing. It’s just, it’s them. We can’t erase what took place for the last four years, but we can start anew and give this team its own identity. It’s not bad. They’re not bad. They’re in a good place.”

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It will be hard to make the clean break Staley hopes for. Amihere has been working out in Columbia since her WNBA season ended and has attended practice. She was only a spectator, but Raven Johnson said she still thinks about the lessons she learned from the Freshies.

“It did feel weird,” she said. “The leadership role. It’s not a day you don’t hear Aliyah’s voice. It’s not a day you don’t hear V’s voice. It’s not a day you don’t hear those Freshies’ voice. We did learn a lot from them but they played a major part in this community, South Carolina. We’re just going to follow their footsteps, and not even that, try to do better.”

There will be growing pains. You can’t lose almost 65% of your scoring and minutes played without a learning curve. According to Staley the summer was a rollercoaster of good days and bad days, comparing them to her first team that went 10-18 and 2-12 in the SEC.

“Obviously, (the Freshies) were mainstays for the last four years, and to not have them is definitely a big void,” Staley said. “But this crew is stepping up. They’re starting to figure some things out. Summer was a different story, like it was almost 2009. But they’re gelling a lot more. I think there is a lot to be desired. It’s a lot of encouragement by what’s taking place over the past couple of weeks. Forced, but taking place.”

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There are some constants with a Dawn Staley team: defense, rebounding, and physical play. Those things won’t change, but this season’s Gamecocks are still searching for their identity and still searching for leadership.

There are plenty of candidates to take on the leadership role, and everyone is confident that part will work itself out. Finding an identity is a little less certain. 

“We’re still working on that on that part,” said Te-hina Paopao, one of the likely leaders. “We’ve just got to bring all the pieces together. We’ve got a lot of talent, a lot of athleticism on this team, and we’ve got to bring it together as a whole and see as the days come along.”

Staley described the current identity as “expect the unexpected.” 

“I see some things offensively that that mirror how we play. I see some things offensively that are pretty good considering who we had,” she said. “I think we can expect the unexpected, which isn’t a bad thing. We expected the expected the past four years, and we don’t have that luxury. But this team had the chance to be pretty good.”

Put another way, everyone – coaches and players – is still figuring out how to put each player in the best position to succeed, but they know the talent is there.

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