Dawn Staley tries to navigate injuries, playing time, and complacency on the road to another championship

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Tuesday was, as expected, another banner day for South Carolina. The Gamecocks were picked to repeat as SEC champions. Aliyah Boston was unanimously picked to repeat as SEC player of the year. Zia Cooke was selected to join Boston as first-team all-SEC, and later named to the Ann Meyers Drysdale Watch List. 

When the preseason AP Top 25 was released at noon, the only question was not whether South Carolina would earn its third consecutive preseason no. 1 ranking, it was whether anyone else would even get a first-place vote. Nobody did. South Carolina was the unanimous favorite to repeat.

The road to the Final Four in Dallas seems to be paved with garnet, and a third straight appearance seems like a foregone conclusion. But Dawn Staley spent most of her time Tuesday pointing out potholes.

Point guard

The biggest pothole is the point guard position. The Gamecocks are trying to get Raven Johnson, Kierra Fletcher, and Cooke up to speed and be able to replace Destanni Henderson. Cooke has been getting heavy practice minutes at the point, as Johnson and Fletcher remain limited by injuries. Johnson is coming off a torn ACL, while Fletcher has some nagging injuries on top of the foot injury that cost her all of last season. 

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Staley said Johnson is coming back “fairly nicely,” and it sounds like she is the likely starter when the season opens. Staley won’t know for sure where Fletcher fits in until she gets healthier.

“We have to go with the healthy bodies that we have, and Zia is doing a great job,” Staley said. “Raven, when she’s in, she practices the entire time. It’s just she doesn’t (…) do every rep. She probably does about 75 to 85 percent of practice. But we’ve got to take her out because we want to lighten her load before we’re able to play her full-time.”

“It’s hard to gauge where we are because we don’t have a full-time point guard,” she added later.

Then there are all of the smaller potholes. The ones that could still do enough damage to end the journey. 

Minutes

South Carolina’s roster is deep, but it is also heavily tilted toward the frontcourt. Only five of the 13 players on the roster are guards, and that includes little-used Olivia Thompson and freshman Talaysia Cooper, who is experiencing a learning curve before she is ready to play. That puts the onus on the coaching staff to figure out how to get all those forwards playing time.

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“I see everybody has gotten better, like noticeably better,” Staley said. “They feel better. They are more confident. They are creating problems for us as coaches because we’ve got to play them. We’ve asked them to improve, we’ve asked them to come back in better shape with more mental strength, with more physical strength, and they’ve done that. Now it’s on us to figure out what combinations that we can play to play all of them. I mean, we are incredibly heavy in the front court with players that can play a lot of different positions. I mean, we’re a month out. We’re going to have to figure it out. But it’s hard, and that’s a good thing.”

Staley specifically mentioned Kamilla Cardoso, Sania Feagin, and Brea Beal as having improved significantly since last season. Beal, she said, has developed a perimeter game on offense that will make her much more of a scoring threat.She also singled out freshman Ashlyn Watkins, saying she’s never had a freshman “as physically prepared for the rigors of a college basketball season.”

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As a result of trying to navigate all these little potholes, there will be some new iterations of the “jumbo” lineup South Carolina used at times late last season. At the time, it usually meant Laeticia Amihere at the three, Boston at the four, and Cardoso at center. This season South Carolina has Amihere practicing at all five positions and Saxton practicing at the three. If Beal’s shot has improved as much as Staley said, she could slide to shooting guard. The possibilities go on, especially as Johnson and Fletcher work their way back to full strength.

Practice

The solution is similar to how Staley managed 16 players last season, something she called “shrinking.”

“We’ll shrink opportunities for our players to be successful. Like if you got three possessions, then something good has got to happen in these three possessions. It is that. It’s like, Zia, you’re playing the point guard position. Hey, let’s not turn the ball over three trips down, and let’s get good shots,” Staley explained. “It’s things like that that just challenge them to be better and to embrace what position they’re playing at that given time.”

Sometimes it means not practicing at all. Staley held one player out of practice completely because she hadn’t been practicing well, just to get her refocused on how practice should look. Anything to avoid those potholes.

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