Reflecting On South Carolina's Historic Senior Class
Four years ago, Dawn Staley and South Carolina signed their best recruiting class in school history and one that espnW HoopGurlz rated as the No. 1 recruiting class in the entire country for the cycle.
It was a class that consisted of USA Basketball gold-medalists in Aliyah Boston and Zia Cooke, two-time Illinois Gatorade Player of the year in Brea Beal, a member of Canada's U17 national team in Laeticia Amihere and one of the best high school basketball players from the state of South Carolina in guard Olivia Thompson.
At the time of this class arrival, South Carolina was two years removed from winning the program's first-ever national championship, back when A'ja Wilson roamed the court for the Gamecocks. In the two seasons following that title run, however, the program had taken a couple more steps back than originally anticipated, so Dawn Staley and her coaching staff set out on a mission to make sure that the program didn't become irrelevant on the national stage, which started with this special recruiting class.
Instead of going through an expected learning curve and taking multiple lumps in year one, this freshman group helped propel South Carolina over UConn for the first time and lead the team to a #1 ranking and a 32-1 record heading into the NCAA tournament, which was unfortunately canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the following season, despite having lost two senior leaders in point guard Tyasha Harris and forward Mikiah Herbert Harrigan, the group led the team to the Final Four, where they lost in the final moments to the eventual national champions in the Stanford Cardinals. They then went on a revenge tour in their junior season, losing just twice against their conference counterparts before running the table in March en route to the program's second-ever national title.
Now, the group has a chance to win a second straight national title and make South Carolina just the fourth program in the history of women's college basketball to go undefeated throughout an entire season.
After winning 123 games and four regular season conference championships, and has twice finished a season ranked No. 1 while breaking countless school and conference records in the process, this senior class has undoubtedly left it's mark, both at South Carolina and in the sport of women's college hoops, and rightfully deserve to get their flowers later today in front of a sellout Colonial Life Arena.
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