She is crafty near the basket, but more surprising is her ability to occasionally score from behind the 3-point line.Ĭooke entered the college game on a wave of highlight reels from the kinds of outlets that typically focus on N.B.A. Last season she averaged a double-double (13.7 points and 11.5 rebounds), and this year, after spending the off-season working on her conditioning, she has proved capable of running the floor with even her smallest, speediest peers. Two of her A-list recruits, the juniors Aliyah Boston and Zia Cooke, are at the helm of what is now a seasoned team, with five returning starters from the trip to a national semifinal, where South Carolina narrowly lost to Stanford.īoston is the team’s centerpiece, able to score from many more parts of the floor than her 6-foot-5 frame might suggest. The Gamecocks seem positioned to be a title contender for several years to come, after Staley has assembled the best recruiting classes in the nation in two of the past three years, according to ESPN. 3 this week is a fairly mild consequence given that the day before their loss to the Gamecocks, the Huskies won in a surprisingly close game against 18th-ranked South Florida (4-2). 1 votes in last week’s poll, when it had only one win, against unranked Arkansas.
They want to measure themselves.”Ĭonnecticut’s strength is hard to assess, because its longtime dominance is bound to influence voters. “They want to play the very best teams in the country.
“You have to feed them,” South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley said of her players on Monday when asked why she had created such a challenging schedule. The Gamecocks’ schedule is notably ambitious, even for a sport in which elite teams typically try to play one another before their conference seasons begin.