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We continue our season preview coverage with South Carolina women’s coach Dawn Staley. Her playing/coaching resume is simply staggering so here are just some of the many highlights: national high school POY at Dobbins Tech, 1991 NCAA tourney MOP at Virginia thanks to a title-game record 28 PTS in a 3-PT OT loss to Tennessee, 2-time national POY who set an NCAA record with 454 career STL and set an ACC record with 729 career AST, 3 straight Olympic gold medals with team USA as a player and 2 more as an assistant coach to Anne Donovan (2008) and Geno Auriemma (2016), voted 1 of the top-15 players in WNBA history in 2011, elected to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012, elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013, and led South Carolina to its 1st-ever NCAA women’s title in 2017. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Coach Staley about being a great PG and bringing in an amazing freshman class.
What is the key to being a great PG? The point guard position is very important. We lost our top-2 scorers and will have to replace some of their contributions from multiple players. If I had to choose I would want to bring back our PG. Tyasha Harris is perfect for this group of players because she goes back into the role of just facilitating. She is going to score for us but she has so much talent around her that we need her facilitating/seeing all of that and directing it, while also finding places for her to score on a consistent basis.
You lost your top-2 scorers from last year (Alexis Jennings graduated and Te’a Cooper transferred to Baylor before getting engaged to Dwight Howard in August) but you are bringing in 3 McDonald’s All-Americans this fall (Aliyah Boston/Brea Beal/Zia Cooke): how are the incoming freshmen looking so far, and which 1 do you think will make the biggest impact this season? The freshmen are transitioning (as freshmen do!), which means they have some really good days and really bad days, but all of them are quick learners. I think that the biggest transition will probably be for Zia because she is at point guard and there are so many elements to being a point guard at this level. I think that she has the ability to score and be a threat when she has the ball in her hands. However, when it comes to just understanding all of the dynamics of the team, she is like any other freshman point guard: they have to figure that out and it will take some time for them to do that. Brea is probably physically more ready/versatile than the other freshmen. She can play a lot of different positions so that will help her cause and she embraces that. Aliyah is the biggest on our team girth-wise and that is the position that we need the most help at since we lost Alexis. She will probably be the one who breaks into the lineup both out of necessity and because she is pretty talented: I am not saying that she will definitely be the starter but just getting her into the lineup to play will help us. I think that the X-factor in this class is Laeticia Amihere. I think that she is going to be someone very important for us. She has been unable to practice full-time for quite some time but now she is getting into the flow of things. We are seeing all that she brings to the table: she is incredibly intelligent and super-athletic. She knows the plays and is almost like a point-forward who is out there directing traffic. I am loving the evolution of who she is as that person who nobody has seen. Then you have Olivia Thompson: she can really shoot the basketball and we have to figure out ways in which we can get her onto the floor to play with her strength.
What are your expectations for the upcoming season? I think that we are a big question mark because there are 6 new players (half of our team is new): when you have that kind of situation you simply do not know. I could better answer that questions in another 2-3 weeks as we get closer to picking up on things. For the most part they have picked things up fairly quickly…but we still have work to do, especially on the defensive side of the ball.