Confident, 'eager to play' Chloe Kitts makes collegiate debut vs. CSU

Five days after she officially moved into her dorm on campus, Chloe Kitts hit the floor at Colonial Life Arena.

The highly-touted true freshman forward from Oviedo, Florida finished her classes for the semester, enrolled early at South Carolina and got the clock started on her freshman season Sunday afternoon. Kitts first checked into the game with 2:20 left in the first quarter and played one extended stint in each half. She checked off a little bit of everything in her first game; 10 points, seven rebounds and two assists, but also three fouls and a turnover in South Carolina’s 87-23 win over Charleston Southern.

“I was scared to look around,” Kitts said. “I was nervous. We always have a good crowd. That was my first game and there were a lot of people. So definitely nervous, but I feel like I’m getting more confident. I’m just happy to be around this coaching staff and all the players.”

Kitts started her scoring career out actually at the free throw line when she split a pair of foul shots on the last possession of the first quarter after drawing a foul on a strong rebound. After missing her first jump shot she picked up her first points from the field on a transition layup, and then checked off the box for her first collegiate 3-pointer a little over two minutes later.

She played most of her minutes in a lineup with fellow true freshmen Ashlyn Watkins and Talaysia Cooper, including all 10 minutes of the fourth quarter. Watkins and Cooper had big games themselves with a combined 22 points and six rebounds, already starting to form some chemistry with Kitts in the youngest lineup Dawn Staley has put on the floor all season.

“If you’re going to bring someone in here that’s able-bodied, obviously they want to play,” Staley said. “Chloe expedited finishing her courses to play, and we’re trying to get her in a good position and feel confident enough to play. The redshirting piece of it really was just a short conversation.”

Kitts is still in the infancy of her learning process. She is less than a week removed from her first practice with the team, and Staley said on Wednesday that they have shrunk the playbook for her in an effort to get her more comfortable early on.

The dimensions of a college basketball court are slightly different to high school — something Kitts found out the hard way when she had her foot on the 3-point line twice for long-range shots that would be 3-pointers in high school — and so is the speed of the game. In particular the speed plays a much larger role on the defensive end of the court, where Kitts did pick up three fouls just trying to keep up.

“I definitely did feel a difference,” she said. “The defense here and everything is so much harder, so I need to lock in and stay focused and not reach. I know I have helpside down below, so I just need to lock in.”

But after one game down with plenty to go, Kitts is already ahead of the curve in a lot of ways. Her outside shooting helped the Gamecocks space the floor around the bigs, something that worked very well in the fourth quarter as the team went on a 13-0 run with Kitts playing in the same lineup as Kamilla Cardoso. She added an immediate rebounding presence herself, pulling in more boards than everyone outside Cardoso, Bea Beal and Aliyah Boston including four offensive rebounds.

And in the middle of a now 11-0 season where the narrative has been dominated by the senior class trying to finish out their careers with another National Championship, she provided a little bit of a glimpse into the future for 2023-24 and beyond.

“I think you have to as a high school player want to be in this situation,” Staley said. “You have to have enough confidence to want to come here and play a role for our basketball team, and then for us she provides something that has been inconsistent for us in that she can shoot the ball. She can shoot the mid-range, she can shoot the 3 and she’s a quick learner. She’s eager to play, she’s eager to participate and we’re slowly going to try to bring her into what we’re trying to do.”