How Dawn Staley kept South Carolina fresh to crush Purdue during layoff
Before South Carolina women’s basketball faced Purdue this Sunday, coach Dawn Staley acknowledged it — this time of year can be tough, especially for young players. With final exams and long gaps between games, the flow of the season is disrupted, and sloppy play can result.
Yet in a dominant effort, No. 5 South Carolina hardly looked sloppy. Against an experienced team expected to contend for an NCAA tournament bid, USC rolled to an 85-49 romp, shooting above 50% most of the day, holding the Boilermakers to 0.65 points per possession and rebounding at one of its best rates all year.
So how did the Gamecocks manage to stay sharp despite playing just two games over the last 15 days?
“I think just playing in practice. We do a lot of skill work and then prepping for teams and stuff and then at the end we usually scrimmage, so we go through it,” senior guard Tyasha Harris said. “So it’s kind of like, easy stuff kind of then, and then it’s like, all right, now you gotta flip the page and now we gotta scrimmage, so I think that helps a lot.”
Practicing hard is nothing new. But Staley said there’s actually been a shift in how she and the team have approached their preparation, not just over the past few weeks, but all season.
“They’re really important. We didn’t scrimmage a whole lot last year. This year, I just think we need to jump start how we want to play and what we want to do. And, you know, even if it’s just for a short period of time, we feel like it gets the competitive juices flowing a little bit. So we’re utilizing that a lot more this season,” Staley said.
That’s in line with how Staley has described her talented freshmen — competitors who respond well to challenges. But in the early going Sunday, it was the veteran group that mostly carried South Carolina. Star freshman forward Aliyah Boston scored just two points in the first half against Purdue. Along with fellow rookie starters Zia Cooke and Brea Beal, the youngsters were shooting a combined 5-of-17 from the field.
By comparison, a quartet of older players — Tyasha Harris, Mikiah Herbert-Harrigan, Destanni Henderson and LeLe Grissett — had 30 points on 14-of-19 shooting in the first half.
“We wanted to jump-start Aliyah, because she didn’t really have a great performance at Temple, so we wanted to give her some better looks. She shot a lot of jumpers in the first half, so we got her a little bit closer to the basket,” Staley said.
After halftime, Boston and Cooke had eight points each, with Boston going 4-for-4 from the field. The two first-year players also had three assists each in the second half.
For Cooke especially, the frenetic energy with which the Gamecocks played seemed to suit her transition speed and improvisational ability. On more than one occasion Saturday, she sliced through the defense for an acrobatic finish, igniting the crowd at Colonial Life Arena.
“I’m very comfortable. You know, my teammates make me comfortable, and they helped me be able to play my game,” Cooke said.
