Carolina ‘Freshies’ want one more title
Top recruits eye senior perfection
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina’s “Freshies” are ready for one last dance.
The Gamecocks’ incomparable quintet of players — led by AllAmerican Aliyah Boston and leading scorer Zia Cooke — arrived to enormous promise in 2019-20 and have more than lived up to those expectations with three regular-season Southeastern Conference titles, three league tournament crowns, two Final Fours and last year’s national championship.
“I think we’ve build such a great bond, ‘The Freshies’ group,” Boston said Thursday. “To be on the last go-round with them, it’s just, like, super fun.”
Undefeated South Carolina (32-0) will start defending its NCAA crown Friday against No. 16 seed Norfolk State (26-6). Eighth- seeded South Florida (26-6) plays No. 9 seed Marquette (21-10) to open the day in Columbia.
South Carolina coach Dawn Staley lured four of the country’s top 11 players in 2019, even coming off a down year — for her, anyway — finishing second in the SEC and getting knocked out in the Sweet 16.
Boston, the 6- foot- 5 force who’s the reigning AP player of the year, was third overall in that incoming 2019 class, right in front of her future teammate Cooke. Forward Laeticia Amihere was 10th overall and Brea Beal, the Gamecocks’ defensive stopper, was 11th.
Olivia Thompson, from nearby Lexington, is the fifth “Freshie.”
Together, they’ve piled up team and individual accomplishments, a haul that could’ve been even greater had their freshman season not ended without an NCAA tournament due to COVID-19. That season, the Gamecocks were on a 26-game win streak after sweeping the SEC regular-season and tournament titles.
Perhaps most important, Beal said, is that the group stayed together to accomplish all their triumphs.
“You don’t really have situations like this where a group comes in from a class and they all stick together to the end,” said Beal, the SEC’s co-defensive player of the year alongside Boston.
South Carolina point guard Kierra Fletcher missed her team’s SEC tournament title win because of an injured left ankle. She’s progressed nicely since then and expects to play Friday. A Georgia Tech grad transfer, Fletcher started 29 of the Gamecocks’ 32 games this season.
West Virginia
Seventh-seeded Arizona ( 21- 9) enter its matchup with 10thseeded West Virginia (1911) on a three-game losing streak.
West Virginia is in its first season under coach Dawn Plitzuweit, who took South Dakota to the Sweet 16 last year.
“When you can really score and you’re an offensively efficient team, you can make up for a lot of things. We don’t have as much of a margin for error because we are not that high-powered offensive team yet,” Plitzuweit said.