South Carolina women's basketball: The message behind Zia Cooke's resurgence

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“Zia, you’ve got to eff it and play.”

That’s what Dawn Staley told Zia Cooke as Cooke’s senior season got underway. Although Staley, who would prefer you think she doesn’t curse, probably didn’t say “eff.”

Cooke’s junior season was her worst as a Gamecock. She was a starter from day one, a talented streak scorer who could make breathtaking plays. As a sophomore, Cooke refined her offensive game and became the Gamecocks’ leading scorer.

But as a junior, Cooke was mired in a season-long shooting slump. At times it seemed like the ball would never go through the basket, turnovers piled up, and mistakes multiplied.

Cooke averaged career lows with 10.7 points, 34% shooting, 29% from three, and 70% from the line. She committed 2.1 turnovers per game. 

“It took her going through that to really get it,” Staley said. “I’d rather her have gone through that, even though it was painful, because on the other side is this. She gets to take this to the WNBA. She’s going to have to play this way on the next level.”

Cooke is one of the Gamecocks’ hardest-working and most determined players – she famously met Staley in the hallway after her first game as a freshman to ask when they could start working on game two. As the goal of a national championship got closer, her focus became sharper.

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She started to turn things around in the NCAA tournament. Cooke scored 15 points against North Carolina, and in the national championship game, she scored eight of her 11 points in the first quarter to help South Carolina get out to an early lead.

And when her shot wasn’t falling, she locked in on defense. It was especially noticeable against Creighton, when she went scoreless but played a major role in holding the high-flying Bluejays to just 50 points. That focus carried over to the offseason.

“She’s mentally tougher. She’s mentally stronger. It’s all come together,” Staley said. “We had hoped that it would come together a little bit sooner, but her time is her time. It couldn’t have happened at a better time. Her senior year. Us coming off a national championship and trying to win another.”

Cooke is averaging 15.8 points per game this season, once against leading the Gamecocks. She’s also shooting a career-high 43% from the floor and 38% from three. Her turnovers are way down – just 1.4 per game. When she struggled in the first half against Vanderbilt, she didn’t get down on herself like she did last season. 

Cooke stuck to the game plan, took the right shots, and scored 11 of her 17 points in the third quarter. She followed that with 24 points on 8-11 shooting against Arkansas, leading Staley to tell her, “It took you four years to start taking good shots.”

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“I was like, yeah, it was just God’s timing,” Cooke said. “I waited my turn, I stayed in the gym, and I never got down on myself. I’m in a great space mentally. When you have great teammates you can never get too down on yourself.”

This season is more than a scoring bounceback for Cooke. She has improved as a point guard, to the point where Staley called on her to run point in crunch time against Stanford and UCLA. And Cooke, who used to tread water on defense, has become a top-notch defender.

“It took me four years to do that too,” Cooke said. “I don’t know what happened. I just continued to play and now I can get over screens. There’s a lot of stuff I can do now. I guess it just took time.”

Cooke’s improved ball-handling and improved defense have helped raise her WNBA prospects. Early in the season, ESPN’s M.A. Voepel assessed Cooke’s WNBA prospects for GamecockCentral, and said Cooke needed to show scouts more to stand out.

“There’s so many (guards), and they have to have something that distinguishes them,” Voepel said. “What do I do that they’re not going to see with ten other guards or fifteen or whatever?”

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But Cooke didn’t add to her repertoire just for the WNBA.

“Damn the WNBA. You’ve got to play defense here,” Staley said. “Very early on in the season, before the season, I was like Zia, you’ve got to eff it and play. Don’t think about anything. Just do you. Don’t get caught up with a missed shot. It’s the same thing I’ve been telling her for four years. You’re not one-dimensional. Just because you don’t score doesn’t mean you don’t have a good game. Now she’s displaying all of it.”

Staley said Cooke is the reason the Gamecocks are expected to repeat as national champions. This season, they have combined last season’s dominant defense with a dominant offense despite largely the same roster.

“We’re totally different basketball team because of her play this season,” Staley said. “She makes us a much better basketball team. She’s efficient, she’s going to the basket, she’s hitting midrange, she’s hitting her threes, she’s passing off. She is in incredible rhythm and because of that it frees everybody else up.”

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