Collin Murray-Boyles, Khadijah Sessions Living Out Dream First Seasons

Khadijah Sessions needed someone else to see it. Athleticism right out of a coach's imagination, an impossibly high motor and a basketball IQ orders of magnitude beyond normal true freshmen.

These are justifiable descriptions for Collin Murray-Boyles, South Carolina men's basketball's true freshman forward already emerging as a superstar two months after taking off his warm-up sweats for the first time.

"I'm glad that he's showing you guys," Sessions told GamecockScoop. "But I was like, 'Oh, okay.'"

Sessions, South Carolina women's basketball's first-year assistant coach and a former point guard under Dawn Staley, had no reason for surprise. This is old news, or at least to her.

She continued her basketball journey post-retirement as a personal trainer and coach for an AAU team called Upward Stars. In the aftermath of COVID's initial shocks as life started moving again and basketball followed suit, she crossed paths with Murray-Boyles. At the time, he was a high school sophomore without an AAU or access to his usual trainer.

But his father made some phone calls, and found the one person with Columbia ties who could check both boxes.

"The first time I met him he was quiet," Sessions remembered. "He was shy, and he was not as tough as he is now. But I just knew he was going to be special for years to come in college into the NBA. He has a wicked part of his game that people don't understand."

Everyone understands now.

In 10 blistering days, he hung 16 points on Georgia to set his new SEC career-high in scoring, dropped another 16 on Ole Miss with a superhuman block on 7-foot-5 center Jamarion Sharp, then smashed the scoring total with 31 points against Vanderbilt.

Just like that, SEC Freshman of the Week. All of this from the man who lost the first month of his college career to mononucleosis, a condition which some athletes need up to a year to recover from fully.

And nobody — maybe not even Lamont Paris — has enjoyed this ride quite like Sessions.

"It's awesome to see," Sessions said. "We've both got 20 wins — I guess we both brought something good to Gamecock country."

Both individuals have an obvious passion for their respective crafts and the required talent to supplement them. But there is no substitute for action, and extraordinary leaps proceeded these triumphs.

Murray-Boyles went from high school basketball to starting in the SEC, and Sessions transitioned from AAU benches to a brand new assistant coaching role on the country's No. 1 team, turning over half of its roster from the previous season.

Of course, neither arrived alone. These moves required trust and just a little bit of blind faith. After just one appearance with four minutes of action, Paris entrusted Murray-Boyles with 17 minutes in South Carolina's annual rivalry clash at Clemson five days after his debut. And when the NCAA allowed for women's basketball teams to add a fourth full-time assistant coach to the staff, Staley knew which direction she wanted to go.

"I was thinking about Khadijah well before we had an opening," she said in a September press conference. "You don't have to teach her anything. You don't have to guide her. You might have to guide her with some other stuff like doing scouting reports the way we like to do, but as far as basketball, top tier."

And right now, both first-year Gamecocks are playing out dream seasons.

The women's team is still perfect, 23-0 and No. 1 in the polls after an 83-65 domination over UConn. The men's squad stands atop the SEC standings with a 9-2 league clip and a 21-3 mark overall, reaching the program's highest AP Poll ranking since 1998 at No. 11.

Two people with Columbia ties, who have worked together over three years, instantly unlocking success after joining different South Carolina programs in the same season.

It is understandable if you feel like this belongs in a movie script.

The cast members are just as blown away.

"I never expected us to be still together throughout this whole journey," Murray-Boyles told GamecockScoop. "Since sophomore year up to now my freshman year, she is still right there, right here next to me. She still helps me, talking to me, working out a couple times. It's real nice to have that opportunity to keep growing with her."

You would get six answers if you polled five basketball scouts about what makes Murray-Boyles tick. He checks all the boxes, even with plenty of room to grow and develop. What is there not to like?

"It's easy because he's a point forward," Sessions said about coaching him. "He can score on all three levels, he can shoot, he can drive, he can make passes, he can play one through five offensively. It makes it easy for a coach, because he's coachable. He's going to do whatever you need him to do."

His seemingly unlimited toolbox is powered by one battery, a trait positively Sessions-like in every context.

Energy.

It is the ultimate intangible, the element of sports impossible to measure and equally unmistakable. You know it when you see it, and especially when it lacks. It is court presence, situational awareness, conditioning, raw determination and about a hundred other things all wrapped up into one buzzword coaches and fans love to throw around without any definition.

What does it mean? Nobody knows, and somehow everyone does.

But if you had to describe energy in one play, it could be a half-court sprint and a perfectly timed leap for a chasedown block to deny a surefire layup.

"She never lets me settle," Murray-Boyles said. "She's always on me. Always telling me how I can improve, never being satisfied, just making me always think of a way to better my craft."

More than the basketball obsession, work ethic or the garnet and black they bleed, this is the thread connecting Sessions and Murray-Boyles.

Every women's basketball game is the same story. Sessions is the first assistant coach out of the huddle on timeouts. She is on her feet as much as Staley, with coaching thoughts and tactics spilling out like a bubbling pot. Pounding her clipboard on the court for defensive intensity. Celebrating every last bucket, steal, rebound and block.

"All the energy that I play with, I get from her," Murray-Boyles said.

Turn on a women's game, and it is easy to forget she no longer plays.

But if you flip over to a men's game, you will find the next closest thing.

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