Dawn Staley got just one 2020 commit. Why ESPN’s rankings expert says that’s fine
The early signing period for women’s college basketball has come and gone, and Dawn Staley and South Carolina have one signee in the class of 2020 — Baltimore guard Eniya Russell.
After bringing in the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class last year with four top-15 prospects, Staley and the Gamecocks picked up a signature from Russell, ranked No. 43 in her class by ESPN HoopGurlz analyst Dan Olson.
A five-star 6-foot combo guard, Russell will bring a broad range of skills and elite athleticism to USC, not unlike current sophomore Victaria Saxton, who Olson also ranked in the same 40’s range while still raving about her potential. And there’s another active Gamecock to whom Olson compared Russell.
“She’s really good off the dribble, getting to the basket, I think that’s her strength. She’s got range on her jump shot, but it’s not consistent, so like many kids, is just an erratic finisher on that sort of thing. Her athleticism is off the charts. She fits the bill for what Dawn Staley does. She’s got some athletic guards like Zia Cooke. This kid fits the description similar,” Olson told The State. “She’s taller than Zia, maybe not as acrobatic of a player as Zia, but she’s close.
“For what unpolished game that she has, she certainly has some nice attributes to her game that obviously put her in a position where she’s one of the better players in the country at her position. Her potential is vast. She’s not a polished product yet ... but she’s got all the ingredients to be a very talented college player.”
But South Carolina still missed out on a number of other top prospects, perhaps most notably top-10 point guard Diamond Johnson, who committed to Rutgers. That means that USC will, barring an unexpected twist, finish unranked in ESPN’s class ratings for the first time since 2015, also the last time Staley had just one commitment in a class.
Still, Olson said one small class should not alarm Gamecock fans.
“It’s not got anything to do with Dawn Staley. Dawn Staley’s Dawn Staley. She can get in the door for anybody in the country. She’s won a national championship, she’s got a No. 1 signing class,” Olson said. “You see these schools that have back-to-back-to-back high end classes, well they’ve had that. But there’s only so many scholarships that they have. So for them to say, ‘Well, we want to go sign five players every class,’ well you don’t have enough scholarships. So for them to just sign one, well, OK, they got a good player in Russell, a better than good player.”
In particular, Olson pointed to the structure of classes and how many players programs choose to take in a given class as a complicating factor in judging just one year. The State tracked more than 20 players in the class of 2020 to whom South Carolina offered a scholarship or showed interest at some point in the recruiting process spanning back several years, but as the 2019 class grew and got better, the dynamic of 2020 changed.
And Olson also said there’s also a strong possibility South Carolina’s top-rated 2019 class was used against it on the recruiting trail.
“Oh yeah. There’s a certain degree of dirtiness that everybody does. They’re all playing against each other, so for one minute if you don’t think people ... are saying, ‘Why are you going there, they just had the No. 1 class? You’re not going to play, you know, you need to come here, you’ll play,’” Olson said.
How effective that negative tactic might be among top-rated players, Olson wasn’t sure. Regardless, however, the Gamecocks are already on to the classes of 2021 and 2022. And in particular, Staley, along with everybody else, will be in hot pursuit of 2021 No. 1 prospect Azzi Fudd, a guard out of Washington, D.C., who is considered a generational talent and was named the Gatorade National Player of the Year as a sophomore.
Fudd took an unofficial visit to South Carolina in 2018 but has yet to announce a list of finalists. She is expected to be pursued by every top program in the country.
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Who: No. 5 South Carolina (6-0) vs. No. 18 Indiana (4-0)
When: 8 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 28
Where: Sports and Fitness Center, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
Watch: Streaming on FloHoops.com (subscription required)
