South Carolina women's basketball: Joyce Edwards is following in A'ja Wilson's footsteps
Joyce Edwards began her freshman season as the most heralded Gamecock recruit since A’ja Wilson. They share many similarities: they are local stars who stayed home, play the same position, and have produced similar statistics.
There is another similarity. Both of their freshman seasons end at the Final Four in Tampa.
In Wilson’s freshman season, she averaged 13.1 points, 6.6 rebounds, 1.0 assists, and 1.8 blocks. Edwards enters the Final Four averaging 12.7 points, 4.8 rebounds, 1.1 assists, and 1.1 steals, strikingly similar numbers.
Both Wilson and Edwards came off the bench for all but one game as freshmen, but that’s where the similarities start to diverge.
Wilson was on a team with veterans like Aleighsa Welch, Khadijah Sessions, Tiffany Mitchell, and Asia Dozier. She also had Aliana Coates as the other half of her twin-towers tandem. Wilson had the luxury of developing and rounding out her game at her own pace
Edwards hasn’t had the same luxury. South Carolina was already figuring out how to replace Kamilla Cardoso, last season’s NCAA tournament MOP, when it lost Ashlyn Watkins, its most experienced frontcourt player, to a torn ACL.
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That left Edwards as part of a three-player forward rotation with Chloe Kitts and Sania Feagin. She had to be productive, and she was.
Edwards led South Carolina in scoring and was the Gamecocks’ go-to scorer by the end of the regular season. Edwards was named first-team All-SEC for her efforts.
That has changed in the NCAA tournament. Edwards is at the top of every opponent’s scouting report, and they are scheming ways to limit her effectiveness.
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“It’s a gift and a curse that you are our leading scorer, so people are going to zero in on that and scheme to cut her production in half,” Dawn Staley said. “Just got to talk her through things. Don’t overcomplicate things. We’re trying to simplify, just really simplify things for her. Things are coming fast at her, so it’s hard.”
Edwards is frustrated, but she understands what is happening and why. She has watched lots of film, trying to recognize what defenses are doing and how to counter it.
“My dad was the one who said it,” Edwards said earlier in the tournament. “He said it in the middle of the season that you’re on top of the scouting report. Teams are scouting for me now more, which is to be expected; it’s March Madness. Teams will do anything to prevent South Carolina from winning.”
South Carolina hopes for another similarity between Wilson and Edwards. In Wilson’s first Final Four game, she had 20 points, nine rebounds, and four blocks, a monster game that was a sign of the dominant player she would become. Could Edwards do it, too?
“I don’t know if Texas is necessarily going to double-team,” Edwards said. “In the other games, they weren’t doing it. They don’t really have to because they have really big forwards and they have a high-pressure defense in general.”
Hopefully, the similarities end there, though. South Carolina lost that game. Edwards wants to one-up Wilson by winning a championship, the ultimate topper.
