Women’s basketball hosts Drexel after 7-0 start to season
South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley likes the way her team is rebounding. The Gamecocks like to avoid extra running in practice.
“If you don’t get rebounds, then you run,” senior guard Ieasia Walker said.
As USC (7-0) looks to extend its undefeated start to the season against Drexel (4-1) tonight at home, its emphasis on rebounds in practice has led to production on the court and the best start to the season in 10 years.
South Carolina is second in the nation in rebounding margin (+20.6) and is one of two SEC teams with two of the league’s top-10 offensive rebounders in senior Ashley Bruner and sophomore Aleighsa Welch.
Welch leads the team in rebounding and is second in the SEC with an average of 9.6 rebounds per game.
“That means we’re getting the hustle plays,” Staley said. “We’ve emphasized that ever since we got together in August. It holds true that once we put an emphasis on something and we put our minds to it, we can be pretty good at it, so I think it can have some trickle effect into some other areas — like hopefully free throws.”
The Gamecocks are shooting 52.3 percent from the free-throw line this season, so Staley emphasized it at the end of Tuesday’s afternoon practice by splitting the squad into the first and second team. Both squads competed for the first to make 50 free throws, and any miss resulted in five pushups.
Staley said it wasn’t the team’s best practice. After the season-ending knee injury to freshman Tiffany Davis, USC is down to just nine healthy players, coupled with the short turnover after the Virgin Islands Paradise Jam. Bruner had to miss some practice time because of her class schedule.
The experience of playing three games in three days in the Paradise Jam prepared the Gamecocks for the situation they’re in now with little time to plan for Drexel, Staley said. The depleted roster means everyone knows they’ll be called upon often.
“Everybody is going to play, so I think they can prepare their minds to playing,” Staley said. “The rotations are what they are. Barring any foul trouble in the first half, we’re pretty set in who’s the first post player off the bench or perimeter player off the bench. We’re pretty comfortable with that.”
Though the Gamecocks have been comfortable through the start of their schedule, leading the SEC in five statistical categories, Walker said there hasn’t been a fear of complacency within the group. After Drexel, USC has just two games before hosting No. 1 Stanford at home.
“You just can’t get carried away with beating these teams because the SEC is going to be tough, and we have Stanford coming up as well,” Walker said. “We’ve got to still prepare ourselves for the better competition out there.”
South Carolina crept into the coaches’ poll at No. 24 and is receiving votes in the AP poll. Just as the right emphasis in practice has led to development during the game, Staley said she’s confident more wins will lead to more votes in the future.
“It comes with time, just like us trying to get our program established and respectable,” Staley said. “South Carolina isn’t a program that people are going to respect right off the bat. We’ve been slowly but surely showing people year in and year out progression and the things we’ve been able to improve on each and every year. I don’t think this year’s going to be any different.”