How Dawn Staley and the Gamecocks are finding recruiting success in California
Dawn Staley achieved a program-first this season, something that doesn’t happen as often for a program that has won nine of the last 11 SEC Tournament titles, been to five straight Final Fours and has won three national championships since 2017.
This first-ever mark didn’t come on the court, though. It came on the recruiting trail.
When five-star forward Kaeli Wynn (ranked No. 17 in the class of 2026 by ESPN) signed to South Carolina in November, she became the first high school recruit from California to do so, per the program’s record book.
South Carolina has had two letter winners from California — Te-Hina Paopao (2023-25) and Destiny Littleton (2020-22) — in the program’s past. Both were college transfers, not high school recruits.
In December, five-star guard Jerzy Robinson (ranked No. 5 in the class of 2026 by ESPN) announced her commitment to Staley and the Gamecocks. Robinson, like Wynn, plays her high school ball in California at Sierra Canyon in Los Angeles. Barring an unexpected decommitment, Robinson will be the second-ever high school recruit from California to sign with South Carolina.
“You always want to be the first in everything,” Robinson told The State this week. “… So just to be a part of history, to be able to come into a big program like South Carolina, and be able to represent the West Coast, it adds something to just being a hometown kid or already being from the South or East Coast. It’s definitely something we pride ourselves on.”
USC’s limited West Coast recruiting history
South Carolina hasn’t ever really cornered the West Coast market on the recruiting trail in the program’s history.
Littleton (a Texas transfer who later transferred from USC to Southern Cal) and Paopao (an Oregon transfer) are the only two letter winners who come from the West Coast, let alone the western half of the country. South Carolina’s stronghold has been the South, with 154 total letter winners coming from the region, per the program’s record book. Most of the Gamecocks’ players have come from the Southeast, specifically South Carolina (82), Georgia (25) and Florida (15).
“For me, I sometimes get hot and cold with 3,000 miles away,” Staley said of California recruiting on Friday. “You can feel when (recruits) like you. When it’s only two or three on their list. I’m all for that. When it’s 10, that’s hard for just us to stay engaged. Especially when there’s so much talent right next to us in our neighboring states. But when you recruit a California kid, you got to know they have really strong interest in you.”
Landing two big-time high school recruits from California when you’ve never done it in program history is notable. Same for doing it in a state that’s home to two perennial NCAA Tournament contenders: Southern Cal and UCLA.
It begs the question: How did South Carolina do it?
A group effort ... with one standout
Sure, Staley’s mere existence is a massive recruiting tool. But recruiting is an “all hands on deck” approach for South Carolina, Staley said, and the relationships coaches build with recruits and their families are important.
For example, Staley credited South Carolina associate head coach Lisa Boyer with playing a key role in bringing helping recruit Wynn.
“Coach Boyer really stayed on Kaeli and her family,” Staley said Friday.
It also doesn’t hurt to have regional ties on your coaching staff when it comes to recruiting. That’s where first-year assistant Wendale Farrow comes in.
Farrow was hired in April to replace Winston Gandy after he left for the head coaching vacancy at Grand Canyon. Farrow is a Sacramento, California native and has deep ties to the West Coast. Prior to coming to Columbia, Farrow logged nearly a decade of experience at colleges in California. Farrow was an assistant at Cal from 2016-21 and an assistant at Southern Cal from 2021-25.
Robinson — who could actually be listed as the program’s first letter winner from Arizona, too, since she lived in Phoenix before transferring to Sierra Canyon — told The State she’s known Farrow for a long time, and he played a big role in her decision to commit to USC. Although Robinson (whom Staley can’t mention by name because she is not signed yet) has been recruited by South Carolina for a while, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a California native around when Wynn arrives on campus.
“We’ve been locked in probably since the eighth grade,” Robinson said of Farrow. “… It’s super good to have somebody that also is an adult, an authoritative figure on the staff who knows the West Coast life and is from LA. (He) can help us when we’re potentially homesick and bring that culture over to where we’re at. So he absolutely played a big part. That’s my dog for sure.”
