Cristina Sánchez Cerqueira can still hear her voice.

Every time her former Arkansas teammate Maryam Dauda called for a screen, it was the same thing.

“She has this high pitched voice,” Sánchez Cerqueira said with a chuckle. “Every time I see a screen, I think of her.”

This is the Dauda effect. The former Razorback who transferred into South Carolina women’s basketball’s program always has a smile, makes a good impression on everyone and is difficult to forget in all the best ways.

Her former head coach is no exception.

“A phenomenal, phenomenal kid,” Arkansas head coach Mike Neighbors said. “We’ll pull for her in every game except for one next year.”

Dauda’s family moved from Nigeria to the United States when she was 12, eventually settling in Bentonville, Ark. Less than two months later, she started playing basketball. Of course, it was a way to make friends in her new surroundings and pick up a new activity, but it quickly turned into a unique talent.

On its own, without any basketball intangibles or coaching, her frame was exciting.

“I heard about this girl who was 6-foot-3,” Bentonville High School coach Tom Halbmaier told GamecockScoop. “One of the coaches over there set the arrangement, and sure enough she was 6-foot-3. What I remember most about her was shaking her hands. Her hands just swallowed up mine.”

She swallowed defenders, too. How could she not at her size?

Halbmaier kept close tabs on her as she settled into her new life and started developing basketball skills. All the while, her core principles never changed. Life comes at you fast when you move halfway across the world as a middle schooler, but it slows down to a manageable pace when you can stay grounded.

Kindness towards everyone. Gratitude for a new, better life with her family and the opportunity. Attention to the details of her better life, like her high school habit of going out of her way to thank the bus driver after every road game. Appreciation of all the details. around her.

And most especially, always showing up with a smile.

“Her coming from Nigeria and coming over here and seeing what people have, she just absolutely appreciates it,” Halbmaier said. “She’s the type of kid that wants everyone to be successful. She’s truly happy for a player to be successful on the team. It’s all genuine; she just lives in the moment.”

Dauda made steady, linear progress in three years at Arkansas. She lived the dream, choosing to play college basketball in her hometown as a McDonald’s All-American. Her parents and younger brother could come to nearly every game, and she went from a player who redshirted her first season while recovering from an injury to a dominant force.

She averaged 10.1 points and 6.3 rebounds per game last season, and went from a sporadic 3-pointer shooter with six makes the entire 2022-23 season to one who shot and made nearly one per game in 2023-24.

But as a team, the Razorbacks were going nowhere.

Arkansas finished under .500 in SEC play in each of her two healthy seasons, and missed the NCAA Tournament both times. The roster fell apart around her, as four of her teammates entered the transfer portal.

With two years of collegiate eligibility left and aspirations of competing at a higher level, she reached her inflection point.

Stay at Arkansas and be close to home, or leave the only place she had ever lived on this side of the globe.

Just like her parents when they moved, she knew there was something better out there.

“If you’re not happy, you’re not going to be the best of you,” Dauda’s father Ali told GamecockScoop. “I think when you’re in a place, you have to be happy going to work every day and see the people you want to see. I don’t think she had that at Arkansas, and I just told her I wanted her to be happy.”

Unlike a lot of players who know they want to enter the portal well before the season is over and do so the day it opens, Dauda took her time. More than a month passed between the open portal entry date and when she finally made the tough, but necessary decision to test the market.

Her 19-point performance against South Carolina put her on Dawn Staley’s radar, and of course it was attractive. The program’s tradition, success, fanbase, coaching staff and legacy of developing post players for professional basketball all factored into the decision.

But none of it mattered more than finding a place she would feel at home, the one thing nobody — not even South Carolina with its stacked trophy case and banner-covered ceiling— could fully replicate from Fayetteville.

“Moving away from her family and friends, that was one of her biggest concerns,” Ali said. “We just told her that sometimes that’s life. Even when you graduate from school and get into the real world, sometimes you’re going to have to move.”

Another month passed, as Dauda and her family meticulously searched for a place she felt she still belonged. After weighing her options and carefully considering the biggest decision of her life, she finally landed at South Carolina the final week of May.

"I came on my visit and it was amazing," Dauda said. "When I came on my visit, how I knew this was home for me was when I got to the airport with my family, I didn’t want to leave. I was like, ‘This is a sign, I need to come back.’"

You would never know Dauda is over 900 miles from home now. Seemingly every day, one of her teammates posts a new video with her on social media. She wears the same smile as always, and that personality still leaves everyone around her wanting more.

Her teammates describe her as the funny one, the one who always has a joke to tell and a laugh to share.

"The team has been so welcoming," Dauda said in a July press conference. "Just talking to them and hanging out with them has been very helpful.”

A seamless fit into Dawn’s daycare.

And the basketball side of everything as the No. 1 Gamecocks gear up to defend their title? Nobody has seen it in a South Carolina uniform yet, but the pieces are there.

“She's a really good defender,” Staley said. “She's a great listener. She can score. She's got multiple moves. She can dribble the basketball. She's got a certain toughness about her. She's coachable. Anything that we ask her to do, she does.

“Once she gets completely confident in our system and what she’s able to do, she’s going to fly.”

South Carolina will start its season in Las Vegas against Michigan. It is the most fitting location possible for Dauda, the player who bet on herself, gambled she could find a new home and is reaping the benefits now before even playing an official game.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” Halbmaier said. “It was a risk for her to take. I’m very proud of not just where she’s at, but how she’s carried herself.”

She thought she would have to trade home for hoops.

In reality, she ended up with both.

************************************************************************

Looking to continue the conversation? Join us on the insider's forum to talk all things South Carolina women's basketball.