She was ‘scared’ in her last hometown game. How USC’s Bianca Jackson got redemption
The last time Bianca Jackson played a basketball game at Dunn-Oliver Acadome in Montgomery, there was plenty of hype, but not much payoff.
As a senior in high school, the soon-to-be South Carolina guard was playing in the annual Alabama-Mississippi All-Star game, and doing so on the floor of the arena where her mother, Freda Freeman-Jackson, and father, Lewis Jackson, coached the women’s and men’s teams for Alabama State.
The hometown star, Jackson had plenty of fans in the building for the game, her final farewell before leaving for the Gamecocks. But she scored just three points, shooting 1-for-8 from the field.
It was a disappointing end to a stellar preps career that included four All-State selections and 2,177 career points, and the problem, as Freda Freeman-Jackson saw it, wasn’t that her daughter was physically overmatched. She just got caught up in the moment.
“She didn’t play as well, she froze up. Her daddy and I, we were talking to her as far as preparing for the game, as far as basketball,” Freeman-Jackson said. “We didn’t think to tell her until afterward that ‘You’re going to have to block out your family members, all your friends, and I know you’ve been in this gym all your life.’ We didn’t think to tell her that. And we asked her (recently) if she was afraid the last time she played in this gym, and she said she was.”
Twenty months later, Jackson returned to Montgomery this Sunday, now a veteran sophomore for Dawn Staley and USC preparing to play against her mother. The two had faced off before, when Alabama State and South Carolina opened the 2017-2018 season in Columbia, but this weekend’s game was different — Jackson was the center of attention, with family and friends cheering every time she took a shot or made a play.
And like that All-Star game, Jackson came out slow, shooting 1-for-3 in the first half and turning the ball over twice, though she did manage to dish two assists and grab two offensive rebounds.
But after halftime, she started to heat up, hitting three 3-pointers in the third quarter as the Gamecocks routed the Hornets, 94-38.
“I thought my teammates did a good job of getting me the ball. I was kinda struggling a little bit in the first half, but they kept talking to me, kept me encouraged and did a good job of helping me get some shots,” Jackson said.
Meanwhile, Freda Freeman-Jackson was experiencing an odd emotion not unlike what South Carolina men’s coach Frank Martin felt when facing his son and USC Upstate last week — feeling good for an opposing player’s success.
“I was happy, and during a timeout, I said, ‘We probably need to stay in that same defense. No adjustment, just stay in that defense,’” Freeman-Jackson joked about the third quarter. “But on a serious note, I was glad to see that she was able to get some shots to fall for her.”
Despite her excitement, Freeman-Jackson made sure not to bother Bianca in game, keeping the chatter to a minimum.
“She didn’t really say anything. We caught eye contact a couple times and gave a little friendly smirk, but we didn’t say anything,” Bianca Jackson said.
And ever the basketball coach, Freeman-Jackson was mostly to see her daughter do well because she knows she’ll have to play well to keep a rotation spot in South Carolina’s deep backcourt.
“She needed to have scored those three 3s, because it’s going to be a little different role for her. ... She’s going to have to be on the top of her game,” Freeman-Jackson said.
Sunday also might not mark the last time Jackson competes in Montgomery — Staley said the two schools will complete their two-and-one agreement next season with a game at South Carolina, but she left the door open on a return for Jackson’s senior season, should the schedule work out that way.
“We’re trying to schedule some heavy hitters, and hopefully we’ll be able to do that, but if not, we’ll certainly come back and finish her career here,” Staley said.