South Carolina women's basketball: What to look for on the first day of practice

South Carolina Women’s Basketball: News • Recruiting • Schedule • Roster • Stats • SEC • Polls • Scholarships

South Carolina tips off preseason practice Thursday afternoon. After three straight Final Fours, a national championship, and a consensus number-one finish over the past four seasons, the Gamecocks will have a drastically new look this season. 

Here are three things South Carolina needs to do in the month and change before the season starts, plus updates on the schedule and some former Gamecocks.

1. Define everyone’s role
Usually, I talk about the rotation, but this season the focus will be more on individual roles. With four players for two positions, the frontcourt rotation should shake itself out pretty easily. But the backcourt, with seven extremely talented players vying for playing time, will be much more jumbled. 

South Carolina will have the ability to shift its rotation based on matchups: the Gamecocks could go big with Bree Hall and Chloe Kitts at the two and three, or small with Raven Johnson, Te-Hina Paopao, and Tessa Johnson in a three-point lineup, or fast with Raven and MiLaysia Fulwiley. There are lots of possibilities.

The key is figuring out over the next five weeks who does what best and who plays well together. It could be similar to the 2022 championship run, where players like Hall and Saniyah Rivers might play 20 minutes one game and three the next as Dawn Staley took advantage of matchups.

[Big Game Special! Get 50% off of a GamecockCentral membership!]

2. Figure out who is South Carolina’s top player
Consider this the biggest role of all. 

In terms of leadership, there are plenty of candidates. Hall, Raven, Paopao, Ashlyn Watkins, and even Fulwiley have each established their leadership qualities. In terms of ability, the list grows to include Kamilla Cardoso, Chloe Kitts, and Sania Feagin.

But someone will have to emerge as the alpha. The last two seasons it was Aliyah Boston. In 2020 it was Tyasha Harris. In 2021 the team struggled to figure out who its leader was for most of the season until Boston took over in the postseason. It’s no coincidence that the team had the worst regular season record of the last four years.

And there was the 2018-19 season that always serves as a cautionary tale about what a leadership void can do.

So who will it be? Will Cardoso take the next step with her game and become more vocal? Will Raven pull all the strings the Harris did? Could Watkins be a quiet but fierce leader like Tiffany Mitchell? As the saying goes, we shall see.

3. Stay Healthy!
It almost goes without saying, but South Carolina wants to keep everyone healthy. Nobody is coming off any major injuries, and nobody wants to get hurt before the season. 

Players have been working out with Molly Binetti all summer getting ready for this point. All those Final Four Fridays were meant to make practice seem easy by comparison.

[Win a custom wooden Gamecock flag]

Also…
Exhibition game announced
South Carolina announced it will play its public exhibition against Rutgers on Sunday, October 22 at 1:00 p.m. The game is in memory of Nikki McCray-Penson, who passed away earlier this year. 

McCray was an assistant at South Carolina for nine seasons and was an integral part of building the Gamecocks into a national championship program. McCray moved on to the head coaching position at Old Dominion and then Mississippi State, where health concerns forced her to retire after one season. She returned to the bench last season as an assistant under Rutgers head coach Coquese Washington.

With the exhibition, the teams will raise funds for In the Middle, a non-profit organization in Columbia that provides financial assistance to women and their families who are battling breast cancer. In the Middle was founded by a breast cancer survivor and assists with medical expenses and other bills in addition to its scholarship program for children of breast cancer patients.

In a statement, Staley said: “When Nikki passed, Coquese [Washington] and I knew we wanted to bring our teams together to honor her for what she meant to our sport. There’s no better way to honor Nikki than to bring people together around the sport she loved and giving them an opportunity to support families going through what hers did in her battle with breast cancer.”

Teams are allowed two scrimmages per year, one secret and one public. Normally the public exhibition has to be against a Non-Division I program, so presumably, South Carolina and Rutgers received a waiver from the NCAA. It is unclear if this impacts South Carolina’s secret scrimmage, which is normally against a power conference opponent. 

[Get breaking news from GamecockCentral]

Finalizing the schedule
South Carolina announced its opponents for the season a little over a week ago, and now the Gamecocks have television assignments and tipoff times. South Carolina will play two games on ABC, nine games on ESPN or ESPN2, nine games on SEC Network, and six games on SEC Network+.

If you’re counting at home, that comes to 26 games, leaving three games up in the air. Those three are the Hall of Fame Showcase game against Utah and road games at Bowling Green and East Carolina. The latter two games are part of the MAC and AAC television contracts, respectively, and the conferences have not announced coverage yet. The Utah game could be a dreaded FloHoops game.

Ex-Gamecocks in action
A’ja Wilson, who is allegedly not the best player in basketball, became the first player in WNBA history to score 30 or more points in three consecutive playoff games. Las Vegas has a 2-0 lead on Dallas and can advance to its second consecutive Finals with a win at Dallas Friday.

Ty Harris hasn’t scored at quite the same clip as Wilson, but Connecticut stole game one from heavily favored New York and held a fourth-quarter lead in game two before falling. The Sun hosts game three on Friday.

Zia Cooke is currently competing for the USA Basketball U23 3×3 team in Poland. On Wednesday Cooke was the Americans’ leading scorer as they split a pair of games. Day two of the competition is Friday.

Discuss South Carolina women’s basketball on The Insiders Forum!