South Carolina women's basketball: Chloe Kitts matches career high off the bench in first round win against Presbyterian
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Sophomore forward Chloe Kitts led South Carolina to a 91-39 win over Presbyterian in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday.
Kitts tied her career high of 21 points and secured a double-double with 13 rebounds. Kitts came off the bench for the just fourth time this year but tallied 26 minutes of play.
She was perfect from the field, making all nine of her attempts. Her lone miss came at the free-throw line.
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“I feel like it was important for my confidence, recently I’ve been low on confidence, but my coaches and my teammates, they uplift me, and they were finding me and just passing me the ball,” Kitts said.
Kitts’ contribution came at the perfect time, as South Carolina was without two starters, Bree Hall and Kamilla Cardoso. Cardoso leads the team in scoring and rebounds and missed the game for her suspension from the SEC Championship game. Hall was the only player to appear in and start each game thus far.
“You want your full squad, we’ve been very successful, we’ve had our full squad,” Staley said. “Then we have two starters out, and in preparation for it, I don’t think about having two starters out.”
Kitts also added a block and a steal to her stat sheet against Presbyterian, helping the team’s defensive efforts without Defensive Player of the Year Cardoso. Kitts also didn’t turn the ball over or commit a single foul against the Blue Hose.
“Last year helped her work a little bit harder in the off-season, to really understand what she needs to do to play at this level, and consistently play at this level,” Staley said.
Kitts joined South Carolina about a month and a half into the season last year, forgoing her final year of high school basketball. Kitts played limited minutes during the 2023 tournament and scored only two points across her four appearances.
“She’s really a freshman when you really look at it,” Staley said. “So I think she’s handled it well, again, it’s taxing. It is really, really hard to play consistently at this level. For the schedule that we continue to have, the nonconference, our conference, it’s pretty hard. So I think her progression is going quite nicely, she’s well above what a normal freshman plays like.”
Kitts and South Carolina will play North Carolina on Sunday for round two of the NCAA Tournament. The two teams last met in November where the Gamecocks took the 65-58 win in Chapel Hill.
Kitts said she remembered the Tar Heels rebounding well when she last played them.
“It was a pretty close game and we just gotta play together, play aggressive, outrebound them, and just keep playing how we’ve been playing together and we’ll be fine,” Kitts said.
