South Carolina travels to Ole Miss Thursday night as it tries to build on its perfect start in the SEC. South Carolina is looking to move to 8-0 in the SEC for the first time in two seasons. It is also looking to continue the best start since the 22-0 start to the 2014-15 season.
1. Boston’s jump shots
Against Georgia, Aliyah Boston went 4-5 on jump shots, all coming from 15-19 feet, and all off pick and pop plays. We had seen Boston step out and hit the occasional jumper before, but she might not have taken five all season. I asked Dawn Staley about it after the game, and her response was interesting.
“It’s what we worked on,” Staley said. “Aliyah has given our coaching staff real comfort in knowing she can step outside the paint and shoot. We don’t want her to fall in love with it, but certainly at the rate that she was shooting and being efficient, we’re going to go back to it and keep working in practice and hopefully we can give her some reprieve from getting beat up in the paint all the time.”
Essentially, Staley manufactured a challenge for Boston. We’ve seen her do it before, like earlier this season when she was trying to get more consistent effort and dared the players to run up the score on USC Upstate. But to experiment in a conference game is something else. It also makes sense. Knowing that it would take a miracle for Georgia to beat South Carolina, Staley had a chance to build Boston’s confidence and put something new on film (and I’m sure if Georgia had kept it closer, or Boston had missed, South Carolina would have put her back in the low post).
Opponents now have more they have to prepare for, and pulling Boston to the high post opens space for Mikiah Herbert Harrigan in the low post, something Staley has wanted to do.
2. Amihere’s development
Laeticia Amihere has had an up-and-down freshman season as she continues to round into form after a knee injury. She is averaging 4.5 points, 4.1 rebounds, and a block per game, but the averages don’t really tell the story. She has stretches where she looks like the top ten recruit that she was, and then games where she looks overwhelmed.
Amihere had nine rebounds against Purdue, and then eight points against Duke. She had 14 points and four rebounds against Kentucky, and then six points and seven rebounds at Missouri. But she also barely played against Baylor and Mississippi State, and struggled against Arkansas (somewhat understandable against the small lineup). She has a knack for drawing fouls (fifth most attempts on the team in the third fewest minutes) but is shooting just 46.9 percent from the foul line.
Watching Amihere play, it’s easy to forget that she is is perhaps the Gamecocks’ best athlete. She is 6-4 with a 6-10 wingspan, she can deadlift 410 pounds, she has dunked in games, and she can handle the ball like a guard. And yet, the most common comment about Amihere is, “She needs to get stronger.” Really, she just needs to play stronger.
Some of it is situational. Amihere is probably best suited to be a stretch four (she is better facing the basket), but Herbert Harrigan is already playing that role. Amihere has a tendency to make herself small. Watch Boston or other great post players, and you see that they never bring the ball below their shoulders. When Amihere gets the ball inside she brings the ball down to gather herself, and that negates her height advantage. That’s when you have to remember that she is just over a year removed from major knee surgery and she is still getting back into her old playing form.
3. Sixth woman
South Carolina has started the same lineup in every game this season, and a big reason it has been able to do that is the unselfishness of Destanni Henderson. Henderson started nine games as a freshman last season and had a claim to be a full-time starter this season, even starting the exhibition. But in the exhibition, Staley realized that the best thing for the team and for Henderson, was to start Brea Beal and bring Henderson off the bench. That allowed more lineup flexibility and cleaner rotations. While it was clearly the best move basketball-wise, Staley worried about how Henderson would accept what could be considered a demotion. She told Henderson she would probably play more minutes this way, and it has been true - Henderson has actually played more than Beal.
“Every player wants to start, and she was playing well so I was worried about how she would take it,” Staley said. “She’s a pretty emotionless kid. She’s not going to let you see what she’s thinking. She always had great responses. You’re not going to shake her equilibrium outwardly. The couple of days after we said who was starting, I saw her play drop a little bit. That’s normal, and I let her have her space, and then great players are able to bounce back and figure it out. They leave their imprint on our team and that’s what she’s done.”
After scoring a season-high 17 against Alabama, Henderson hit a rough patch. She scored just 18 points over the next four games, and the rest of her game slumped as well. She wasn’t rebounding or distributing, and she struggled defensively against Mississippi State. Assistant coach Lisa Boyer pulled Henderson aside. Staley recounted the conversation.
“You’re not the Destanni that we know: explosive, taking what the defense gives you, and controlling that second unit,” she said. “When she’s going, we’re a different basketball team.”
The result was what Staley called Henderson and the reserves’ best game of the season against Georgia. Henderson had 14 points, six rebounds, six assists, played tenacious defense. She was part of a group that, even with all the starters out of the game, held Georgia to just six points in the fourth quarter.
Henderson is now averaging 8.4 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 2.7 assists per game this season. Although she would prefer to start, she has embraced her role and everyone is thriving because of it.
“Coach tells me all the time that I’m a starter, that I’m capable of starting,” Henderson said. “I’ve got to stay positive, no matter what my role is, and feed into that and feed off the energy of the team and give them energy when I’m on the bench.
4. Housekeeping
Earlier this week the NCAA announced the candidates for the 2025 and 2026 Final Four. In case you missed the announcement like I did, the finalists are Columbus, Ohio (Nationwide Arena), Phoenix, Arizona (Talking Stick Resort Arena - yes, seriously), Portland, Oregon (Moda Center), Tampa, Florida (Amalie Arena). Phoenix and Portland are each seeking to host the Final Four for the first time. Columbus hosted in 2018, and Tampa hosted in 2008, 2015, and 2019.
The next four sites have already been announced: San Antonio (Alamodome, 2021), Minneapolis (Target Center, 2022), Dallas (American Airlines Center, 2023), Cleveland (Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, 2024). With Cleveland hosting in 2024, it seems unlikely that the NCAA would want to stay in Ohio in 2025, hurting Columbus’ chance for that year. Also, I know somebody will ask about this: Ohio State plays at Value City Arena in Columbus, so if they happened to make the Final Four, they technically wouldn’t be at home.
The regional sites for the next two years have also been set. In 2021 they will be Albany, NY, Austin, TX (H-E-B Center), Cincinnati (Cintas Center), and Spokane, WA. In 2022 the sites will be Bridgeport, CT, Greensboro, Spokane (again), and Wichita.
5. Scouting the Rebels
There is no polite way to say it: the Rebels are bad. They are hovering down near 300 in the RPI and are currently 275 (I’ve been monitoring it and Ole Miss only seems to rise when they aren’t playing), and the strength of schedule is 175. That is the worst in the SEC by far, and of power conference schools, only Pitt (287) has a worse RPI. South Carolina, by comparison, is ranked #1 in the RPI and has a strength of schedule of 12. Ole Miss will be underdogs in every game the rest of the season, and about the best thing they have going for them is that Thursday night’s game is a powder blue out.
The Gamecocks have won 11 straight over the Rebels, and while most of those games weren’t close, the Rebels have traditionally done a surprising job of hanging around. Only two games, a 99-70 win in 2014 and last year’s 76-42 game, have really been lopsided. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I think this game is going to be more along the lines of the 2015 Alabama game, a 102-59 rout, than most of the recent Ole Miss games.
Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin is a talented recruiter who is well-respected, and she has become friends with Staley (Coach Yo was at Jacksonville before Ole Miss, and her Dolphins lost to South Carolina in the 2016 NCAA Tournament). Staley has offered her support both publicly and privately.
“I send her texts of encouragement because we went through the same thing 10, 11, 12 years ago,” Staley said. “You’ve just got to stay the course. I tell her, put in your culture. The wins and losses will take care of themselves, but if you don’t have a great foundation it’s going to be built on something that is undisciplined and at some point it's going to break. She’s doing it the right way.”
Staley wants to see the Gamecocks take control of the game early and quickly squash the emotional boost the Rebels will have from being at home and taking on the #1 team.
“Obviously I think we are the better team that is going to take the floor, but you have to play it like you are the better team,” Staley said. “They’re going to get up for us, it’s on the road, so we don’t want to leave anything to chance.”
The Ws
Who: #1 South Carolina (19-1, 7-0) at Ole Miss (7-13, 0-7)
When: Thursday, January 30, 8:00 pm
Where: The Pavilion at Ole Miss, Oxford, MS
Watch: SEC Network+
