South Carolina women's basketball: Adhel Tac can't play, but she's still having fun
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This is what Adhel Tac dreamed of: winning the SEC Tournament, making the Final Four, celebrating with her teammates, and bonding in the locker room. Only she never dreamed it would be happening right now.
Shortly after she signed with South Carolina in November, Tac suffered a broken kneecap. It was her second significant leg injury in as many years, and it meant she would miss her entire senior season of basketball.
Soon, a plan was hatched. If Tac could graduate early, she could enroll at South Carolina in January and go through surgery and rehab with the Gamecocks’ highly regarded training staff.
“We took a deep dive into seeing if she could actually get the coursework done to graduate early, and she was right there,” Dawn Staley said. “It didn’t take much. It does take some communication and partnerships with her high school, who was prepared to allow her to do that. Her high school coach was great in helping us expedite it.”
Tac enrolled in time to start classes on January 8. She is the third player who has enrolled early under Staley. Chloe Kitts enrolled last December and in 2019 Laeticia Amihere enrolled midseason.
Each situation was different, but all three still share an unusual bond. Amihere has moved on to the WNBA, but she was in Columbia earlier this season to work out and she talked to Tac.
“The times that she’s come I’ve been able to talk to her,” Tac said. “I’ve seen that she had an experience similar to my own. And I was able to get some pieces of advice from her. Just not giving up, don’t get too discouraged, you know, this process, make sure that I’m putting full faith in myself to trust myself during this process.”
Kitts was healthy and played immediately instead of redshirting, so her experience was different. However, she experienced challenges of her own before finding her role this season, and she shared what she learned with Tac.
“She’s still getting comfortable. She’s young,” Kitts said. “I know exactly how she feels but I didn’t come in with the injury. So I don’t 100% know how she feels. We’re just all trying to be there for her and trying to make her feel part of the team, which she is. She has a voice and she’s pretty comfortable, actually. But yeah, she’s nice to have part of and I’m happy that she’s here.”
Kitts emphasized to Tac that she has a support system. Tac said everyone has welcomed her with open arms as the youngest sister. Junior Bree Hall, one of the team’s veterans, is Tac’s roommate, and Kamilla Cardoso, who plays the same position, has taken Tac under her wing.
Staley said the coaches try to keep Tac involved and she has picked up coaching points.
“We try to keep her involved in our scouting report so she has an understanding,” Staley said. “Before we played LSU for the championship, I asked the team, Do you all remember what LSU does in ball screen action offensively? And there was a silence over the room. Adhel is like, Yeah, they pop, and they pop.”
Tac’s intelligence is one of the reasons Staley gave her what may be the ultimate compliment.
“I equate her defensively to Aliyah Boston,” Staley said. “She’s communicative, she’s high IQ, and she can move. I know she doesn’t move very fast right now because she’s on crutches, but she can really move. Then from an offensive standpoint, I really feel like she can impose her will. She’s got great footwork, great hands, great IQ, can kick it out. I’m really excited about her progression and what she’ll bring to our program.”
Staley first made that comparison during the recruiting process, and Tac has been able to talk to Boston several times. Still, I joked with Tac, there’s nothing like being compared to a National Player of the Year and top WNBA Draft pick to put pressure on a person.
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“I don’t think there’s any pressure,” Tac said. “She is a great inspiration. So it’s a good thing that I get to follow in someone like that, learn her path, learn her journey and be able to make my own way through that.”
Tac fits in with the Gamecocks’ melting pot of players. Her parents immigrated from South Sudan to Texas, where Tac was born. She has three brothers and seven sisters, including one who played at UTEP last season (her name is also Adhel, which is the product of Sudanese names not translating exactly into English).
Tac had surgery on her knee on February 2. Less than two months later she is almost entirely off crutches (she didn’t have them in the locker room in Albany but told me she still has to use them occasionally). Since she is already out for this season, South Carolina’s medical staff is encouraging Tac to be patient and take things slow.
Until she’s back on the court, Tac is enjoying the tournament ride.
“I feel like we’re always able to have so much fun wherever we are, whatever we do,” she said. “We’ve been able to do that on and off the court. And I feel like that’s a really great thing when you’re on a team, where you guys enjoy each other’s presence, especially when you see each other a lot. And that’s really what it is.”
