South Carolina women's basketball: Khadijah Sessions' impact already being felt
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The branches of Dawn Staley’s coaching tree are starting to grow, with former players popping up on coaching staffs around the country. This season, for the first time, that includes bringing a former player, Khadijah Sessions, back into the fold as an assistant coach.
Sessions was a three-year starter for the Gamecocks and played from 2012-2016, the beginning of South Carolina’s glory years. She led them to their first SEC titles and first Final Four.
Sessions is one of two new Gamecock assistants. The other is Winston Gandy, a former Duke assistant who replaced Fred Chmiel. The NCAA passed legislation that allowed programs to add a fourth assistant coach. When the legislation took effect on July 1, Staley quickly brought back Sessions.
“Khadijah is a coach,” Staley said. “She’s a point guard. When you play the point guard position. That’s what you do. You’re a point guard for life. And it’s been seamless with her. I was thinking about Khadijah well before we had an opening. And when we had an opening an opportunity, I’m like let’s go.”
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Sessions has hit the ground running. Her playing experience means she already understands what Staley expects. Sessions also stayed around the program following her playing days, so she is familiar with the players she’s now coaching.
“She’s like boom. It’s been great,” Staley said. “You don’t have to teach her anything. You don’t have to guide her. Maybe we have to guide her with some other stuff, doing scouting reports the way we like to do them, but as far as basketball, top tier.”
Sessions averaged a modest 5.9 points during her career, with a high of 7.2 as a sophomore. But she finished her career among the top ten in career starts (she has been bumped out of the top ten since then) because of her defense.
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I once wrote that Sessions played point guard like a middle linebacker. She has carried that intensity into coaching, where she is the ideal tutor for South Carolina’s likely starting backcourt of Raven Johnson and Te-Hina Paopao.
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“Khadijah is like the energy source,” Raven Johnson said. “She’s a fireball. She just be running up and down the sideline, like just screaming, and we need that. She loves defense. So it gets us amped up. I’m glad she’s on the staff.”
Paopao was never known for her defense at Oregon, but she knows she needs to improve on that side of the ball if she wants to play in the WNBA. Being mentored by Sessions is the perfect situation.
“Oh, I love her,” Paopao said. “She’s a defensive specialist, so I’ve been working on defense. She’s been very helpful in that way and just getting me better as a defensive player.”
After her South Carolina playing career ended, Sessions played in Finland and then was a scrimmage player with Staley’s 2019 AmeriCup team. She can still hold her own against the current Gamecocks, whether she’s going one-on-one in drills or in scrimmages with the Highlighters, South Carolina’s male practice players.
“When they have class, she and Winston will step in and run the highlighter team,” Staley said.
She didn’t say if Sessions still plays like a linebacker.
