Heading into NCAA tournament, ‘Big 3’ has developed for Dawn Staley, Gamecocks
Over the past 10 games, South Carolina women’s basketball has experienced just about every outcome — there’s been the low of losses, both narrow and more one-sided, and the high of victory, culminating in an SEC tournament championship.
But through it all, a constant has emerged. And as the Gamecocks prepare to open their NCAA tournament run, it will likely go a long way in determining how far USC can advance in the tourney.
That constant has been the “Big 3” of junior guard Destanni Henderson, sophomore guard Zia Cooke and sophomore forward Aliyah Boston. Through the early part of the 2020-21 season, especially early in SEC play, the three star players often took turns dominating games, with one or two putting up big numbers while the other fading slightly into the background.
In these past 10 games, though, the three have all scored in double figures seven times. And as they have figured out that balance, their importance has only grown.
In the season’s first 16 games, Henderson, Cooke and Boston accounted for 51.1% of South Carolina’s field-goal attempts, 49.9% of its makes. In the past 10, those numbers have bumped up to 61.8% and 63.6%, respectively. In the SEC tournament, more than 70% of the shots USC made came from those three.
That’s the nature of crunch time, as coach Dawn Staley acknowledged — as the margin for error shrinks, the top players become all the more vital.
“At this point we got to win basketball games. We don’t really care where the points are coming from. As long as we can work inside-out and we get reversals. At that point we will create good shots for anybody on our team. But I like the aggressiveness of the three of them because they were very deliberate in the type of shots that they were taking,” Staley said after South Carolina won its SEC tournament semifinal against Tennessee.
“... At this point those are the three that have been putting points on the scoreboard for us, so you want your best players with the ball when the game is on the line. More than likely it will be one of them that takes a lot of shots.”
Those three are the ones averaging double figures in scoring, and they’re the ones averaging more than 30 minutes per game, too. And while depth is an oft-discussed topic, in the end, Staley knows she has to lean on her stars, especially a player like Henderson, who acts as the floor general.
“I just didn’t feel comfortable with anybody else on the floor ... because she was working so well,” Staley said after the SEC championship game, in which Henderson played the full 40 minutes. “I knew she was tired, but I brought her over to the side, I was like, ‘You got to finish it, you got to finish it. You got to suck it up, you got to finish it. We can’t afford to take you off the floor.’ She shook her head and she made plays.”
Beyond simply playing lots of minutes, though, the Big 3 have also had to relearn to play off each other in some respects. After last season, when the senior combination of Tyasha Harris and Mikiah Herbert Harrigan led the way and kept everything in balance, there was an adjustment period this season.
“It was hard at first, just talking about from the beginning of the year, just making an adjustment. We don’t have Ty and Kiki any more. They were the ones leading us out there,” Cooke said. “It took us quite a while to understand we were the ones that needed to step up to the plate. Like I said, game by game we’re getting better and better.”
Key to that understanding, Staley said, is the dynamic between Boston in the post and the guards. Staley has long liked to build her offense from the inside out, but even more so with Boston, a dominant player who can finish through contact and take over games. At times this season, however, she has failed to get as many shots as Staley wants — four against Tennessee and Ole Miss, five against Missouri.
She’s credited that in part to Cooke and Henderson not getting her the ball as much. In the SEC quarterfinals against Alabama, though, they made sure to get Boston involved, and the results were much more to her liking — Boston had 16 points off 12 shots, Cooke had 22 points off 17 shots and Henderson 18 off 10. All three shot at least 50% from the field.
“We were deliberate in what we were trying to accomplish, getting the ball inside, putting (Boston) in a position where she can score on the block, and ball reversal,” Staley said. “If you look at our guards’ shooting percentage, it’s great. They haven’t shot 50% in a long time together, together along with Aliyah. That’s what we were trying to convey to them. Get the ball to Aliyah, but we’re not saying you stand around with the ball over your head and be robots. It is, you’re going to benefit directly from her.”
Conversely, Boston has worked on passing out of double teams and finding the open player on the perimeter when opposing defenses collapse on her, which has led to the benefits Staley mentioned.
“Coach, the past couple days before coming into the tournament, she really talked to us about being deliberate, staying on our line, just being strong with whatever we do,” Boston said after the Alabama victory. “Getting the ball inside was definitely something we worked on. If I didn’t have a shot, I was able to kick it back out and we were able to work the offense from there.”
Heading into the NCAA tournament in the coming weeks, Henderson, Cooke and Boston’s importance is only likely to grow. While Staley would obviously like to utilize the team’s depth when possible, there’s a limit to how evenly she wants shots to be distributed.
“If we can continue to move the ball as well as we moved the ball, we should at efficiently, especially with Henny and Zia and Aliyah, those three are able to do that, then we bring another player or two, get them close to double figures, that’s as even as we can be,” Staley said. “A lot of teams aren’t putting five people on the floor that can score the ball.”
