A’JA Wilson is still part of the Gamecock Dynasty: “She legitimizes our program” – rivals.com – South Carolina

Tiffany Mitchell Just remember the chaos. She screams, jumps, runs down the corridors.

How else would you react to the news of a teammate as A’JA Wilson?

“I remember when she is committed to all of us sitting in the dormitories,” Mitchell told GameCCCCOOP. “I and my teammates were sitting in our rooms and when she said she was committed to South Carolina, I literally remember the whole hostel in turmoil. “We were running through the corridors, screaming, we were just so happy.”

Wilson, the Colombia native to Heathred Hall and # 1 dial in the 2014 class, dumped Uconn and Tennessee’s likes to stay home and play for Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks.

She was a local hero, but still raised his eyebrows around the country. The Dawn Staley program was on the rise with the NCAA tournament participation in the back, but nothing in the same stratosphere of the monolith is now. A regular title for the SEC season, zero conference tournament titles, participation in Zero Final Four, and certainly no one outside the building dreamed of winning a national championship.

But in the way only one elite colleague player can transform everything. South Carolina has won the SEC tournament for all four years in which he was on the campus, won the regular title for the season, apart from one, made his first two final fours and, of course, captured the National Championship in 2017.

“We just wanted her to change the story,” former Wilson teammate and current South Carolina coach Sessions in Hadidja In front of GamecockScoop. “It just made people believe that the best recruits could come here and yet succeed at this level and the next level.”

One is to influence the victory while playing for the team. But the ascent of South Carolina to the top of the world of basketball at college never looked back when Wilson left in 2018 and has only been improved since then.

This is the heritage of the largest athlete in school history, who already has a statue outside the Colonial Life Arena and will see that her T -shirt has retired to the ribs on Sunday before Gamecocks hosted the Ideal.

For all the great players that Stiley has also recruited, through all trophies and parades in the last 17 years, the dividing line of everything is before or after A’a Wilson.

The South Carolina program today is unrecognizable by the one who engages, the type of session on the spot, Mitchell and Staley only dreamed.

Gamecocks cut 17 networks in the history of the program – eight conference tournaments, six final four participations and three national championships – and all 17 happened after Wilson first stepped into the campus.

“She legitimizes our program,” Staley said. “She brought him to another level and we still feel her inheritance today. Everyone still talks about her contribution to our program. “

As a talent once in life, her future would be set. She could play in Uconn or Tennessee, and everything in her personal career would probably unfold in a similar way. These three WNBA MVPs, two championships, two Olympic gold medals and any other recognition could still come on their way.

But as she stays home and remains engaged in South Carolina, the heritage goes beyond everything on the court. Her visibility, as one of the best athletes in the world, is a staley dialing tool, something that the high school participants and the participants in Aau Camp still ask her.

“If the best basketball player, if the world can come from Colombia, South Carolina and achieve its dreams, why can’t you?”

It’s a simple terrain to dial, but one of the program still sees a major advantage. Players like Wilson are raising sports, and their impact has been running through generations. As more high school programs are investing in the basketball of girls around the state – an impetus, promoted to South Carolina’s success over the last decade – more streams of talents.

Ashlin Watkins, Milalisa Fulvili and Joyce Edwards? Three local products that grew up watching Gamecocks from the Wilson era and decided to stay home and follow the same way.

A major moment for Edwards, who decides to stay home after a late LSU impetus? A conversation with Wilson in a game of South Carolina just weeks before he made last November.

“She has experienced this,” Edwards said. “It is currently dominated by the league. She knows what it is like to go through everything I want to go through. She is what I strive to be. Little Joyce was like, “Aunt, it’s crazy.” The older one tries to learn from her, to take a little wisdom. “

Wilson was not the first Gamecock of the Staley era to retire his number; Mitchell won the honor last year. But she was the accelerator, the player who turned well into great and set up Gamecocks for everything in the future.

It is still an integral part of South Carolina’s women’s basketball, a consistent presence to which everyone addresses as an example of what it can be, and what the standard for the program should be. No one else had this type of impact and no one else could. She was one of the best unicorn who went into a program just when she needed a player like her and left him infinitely better than she found.

There was a building, then there was Aja, then there were trophies. Clearly as a day, past and present.

“I would never imagine it, frankly,” Wilson said. “I just came here, I just wanted to win, wanting to be a sponge for all this. To see the inheritance, the longevity of this program and where it goes, I shine pomegranate and black. I’m just like, “This is our program, this is what we are built on, this is our culture.”

Tomorrow, when her T -shirt is revealed in the ribs, it will change the ceiling of the colonial life arena forever.

A suitable honor for the player who changed everything else.

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