Dawn Staley's November lineup change comes full circle at UConn

HARTFORD, Conn.— All the way back on Nov. 17 in just the third game of the regular season, Dawn Staley dropped Raven Johnson to the bench after the redshirt freshman point guard started the first two games.

Johnson has been South Carolina's bench point guard in every game since, and Staley's reasoning was been targeted since the start.

“You saw the Raven-Kamilla [Cardoso] connection,” Staley said about the decision after the Clemson game. “It’s a real thing that we just need to strategically make sure we have them out on the floor. They just have a connection.”

Both players have had ups-and-downs since then, with Johnson still recovering from a torn ACL last season and Cardoso battling through stretches of inconsistent play.

On Sunday afternoon in Hartford, with the Gamecocks facing their toughest road environment of the season against a top-five opponent, everything clicked.

Cardoso scored 17 points and pulled in 11 rebounds in a statement performance, and her sidekick Johnson scored 14 points and dished off seven assists — both career highs — as No. 1 South Carolina won an 81-77 decision over No. 5 UConn.

That bench connection was an injection of life for South Carolina (23-0) after a slow start. The Gamecocks shot 31.3 percent from the floor in a first quarter they lost by 11 points, with Johnson not even checking into the game until UConn (21-3) was up six and Cardoso’s first entrance coming even later.

But the duo -- along with fellow key bench contributor — Laeticia Amihere — changed everything. Johnson's dynamic passing ability opened up the floor and generated offensive looks South Carolina was incapable of producing in the early minutes. She forced the issue in transition after UConn misses, zipping the ball into pockets of space leading to easy scores.

Johnson had a crucial three-point play early in the second quarter when she drove in transition and finished off a layup, drawing a second foul on per point guard adversary Nika Mühl in the process. She knocked down a pair of mid-range jumpers at a time when shooting was a struggle for almost everyone else in a South Carolina uniform, and helped the Gamecocks escape a choppy first half with a 34-34 tie.

“I thought she did a phenomenal job on Mühl in distributing,” Staley said about Johnson. “We wanted somebody else to initiate their offense as some sort of disruption. And then when we got in the halfcourt she didn’t ever take the ball without her actually feeling her [Johnson]. And then when Mühl doesn’t have it, that’s the country’s leader in assists. She can’t really make people better if she doesn’t have the ball.”

Cardoso was the unstoppable post presence South Carolina needed to mitigate a poor shooting performance. Boston and Zia Cooke missed their first 13 shots of the game combined, but Cardoso released the pressure with her tenacious offensive rebounding. She physically overwhelmed UConn's front court, pulling in four offensive rebounds in the first half alone and nine in the game.

She very literally scrapped South Carolina back into the game, one meat-grinder of a possession at a time. It eventually took a toll on her, with fouls and whistles stacking up in a brutally physical game. Eventually Cardoso fouled out for the first time this season, picking up her fifth foul on a controversial contested shot with 1:20 to go. She received a technical foul after arguing the call, an emotional moment for a normally easy-going player. It prompted Staley herself onto the court to show support, later saying "she's not a robot," in response to the incident.

Cardoso left every piece of herself on the XL Center floor. Her teammates noticed.

“I’ve been playing with her for years,” Johnson said. “I know what she can bring to the table. I always tell her, you’re the X-factor for this team. When you’re dominant, there’s nobody that can stop you. Kamilla, the day she’s had, nobody can stop you.”

The Johnson-Cardoso duo was a microcosm of why the Gamecocks have been able to hold off all challengers so far this season in their quest for back-to-back National Championships. Now for the year South Carolina's bench has outscored opposing benches 920-252, boosted by a 37-0 advantage over the Huskies.

UConn only had eight scholarship players available, and two of them fouled out. It was a similar story against Stanford in November, when South Carolina shook off an early start to force overtime and eventually win behind a 34-9 bench scoring advantage.

Last Sunday at Alabama, it was Bree Hall who scored a career-high in points. Ashlyn Watkins played her season-high in minutes and scored 13 points against Missouri three weeks ago. Bench players accounted for 82 of the 200 (41 percent) on-court minutes Sunday, and those skillsets range everywhere from Johnson's electric ability to control a game from the perimeter to Cardoso's overwhelming interior presence.

"She’s mobile, she’s efficient, she rebounds the basketball even if it’s her own misses and she’s a shot blocker,” Staley said about Cardoso. “If she doesn’t have the performance that she had today, we lose the basketball game.”

Less than two weeks into the season, Staley made her only starting lineup shuffle of the season in a calculated effort to get Johnson and Cardoso on the floor together.

Exactly 80 days later, it came full circle.