‘She’s ours’: What A’ja Wilson means to women’s basketball, South Carolina is undeniable

Lo Dreher sat with her roommate at the Copper Beech apartment complex on April 16, 2014, watching ESPNU.

A’ja Wilson, the No. 1 high school girls basketball player in the nation, was about five minutes up the road, sitting between her mother Eva and father Roscoe inside the gymnasium at Heathwood Hall. A’ja was the only top-100 prospect yet to announce her commitment before the NCAA regular signing period. Her four finalists were UConn, North Carolina, Tennessee and South Carolina.

Then USC-student Dreher waited years for this moment, having watched A’ja grow up at various AAU tournaments. As had the rest of Columbia. And the hometown team advanced to final cuts. Oh, the possibilities...

Finally, live on ESPNU, A’ja made her decision known.

“I will be attending the University of South Carolina,” she said into a microphone.

Words that would change women’s basketball — and the Palmetto State — forever.

The gymnasium erupted, as did Dreher and her roommate. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” they cheered, jumping up and down on Dreher’s bed. Through the wall they heard muffled, joyful screams from their neighbors reacting to the same news.

Up the road, A’ja flashed a smile, Eva pumped her fists in jubilation and Roscoe pulled his daughter in for a kiss on the cheek.

A lot has changed in the last 10 years. The Copper Beech complex goes by a different name (first The Southern @1051, then The Rowan). Dreher graduated from South Carolina, as did A’ja. And the 6-foot-4 post player from Hopkins has cemented herself as one of the most dominant women’s basketball players in the world.

But one thing remains the same: South Carolina’s love for A’ja, who’ll take the court at Colonial Life Arena for the first time since 2018 Saturday to play a WNBA preseason game with the Las Vegas Aces against the Puerto Rican National Team. Finally, a chance for the South Carolina faithful to see their girl again, live and in person.

A chance to welcome her home.

A’ja Wilson’s place in South Carolina sports lore

A’ja sat in CLA with her family and over 7,800 other Gamecocks fans for South Carolina’s home game vs. Missouri on Feb. 2, 2014. Countless spectators, Eva remembered —including one near the court holding a giant cardboard cutout of A’ja’s face — wore fluorescent green shirts that read “There’s no place like home” in honor of the top prospect’s official visit to USC. Together they chanted: “We want A’ja!”

It wasn’t the first time she heard a college basketball crowd say so. Tennessee fans sang the same tune. Everybody wanted A’ja, as evidenced by the plastic trash can-sized bins full of recruiting letters taking up space in the Wilsons’ home ( and still stored in their garage). But something about this visit felt different.

“They really made A’ja feel like she needed to stay home,” Eva told The State. “That everything she needed to get was right here at home.”

Two months and two weeks went by till the day of A’ja’s announcement at Heathwood Hall. The Wilsons sat in the locker room waiting to make their gym entrance, still uninformed as to what A’ja had decided.

Eva and Roscoe told A’ja they would not find out where she was headed with the rest of the world. She better tell them now, and call all four finalists to let them know, too.

A’ja relented, letting them know the news she told her grandmother Hattie Rakes weeks before: A’ja was staying home. But she didn’t want to call UConn, UNC or Tennessee to deliver the bad news. So Roscoe called them, while A’ja called Dawn Staley.

Staley picked up the phone in her office, where the rest of the coaching staff had gathered to watch A’ja’s announcement on TV.

“Hey, coach Staley,” A’ja said on speakerphone for everyone to hear.

Uh oh. Her tone. Staley recognized it all too well. The “we know we don’t have them” tone of a prospect letting a school down easy. Not the “vibrant, you get good news” type of tone.

“Hey, A’ja,” Staley said.

“I’m coming to South Carolina,” A’ja said.

Staley’s office, like Dreher’s apartment and Heathwood Hall’s gymnasium, erupted.

“Dawn Staley and A’ja Wilson chose each other and they completely changed the landscape of women’s basketball,” Dreher said.

Staley took over South Carolina in 2008. In six seasons, she took the team from bottom-tier SEC status to the first NCAA Tournament No. 1 seed in program history (2014). La’Keisha Sutton was Staley’s first Gamecock signee (2008) and helped lead the team to a Sweet 16 and a top-25 finish her senior year. Tiffany Mitchell, whom Staley refers to as her “firstborn,” was the program’s first SEC Player of the Year (2014) and is — to date — the only Staley-era athlete to have her jersey retired, in 2023.

But A’ja is the most influential and decorated player to ever wear garnet and black.

She helped South Carolina reach two Final Fours and win its first national championship in 2017 — earning Most Outstanding Player along the way. A’ja was also the program’s first consensus National Player of the Year and No. 1 overall WNBA Draft pick (2018).

Her freshman year saw USC’s average attendance skyrocket from 6,371 —at that point the highest at CLA in program history — to 12,293. The Gamecocks haven’t dipped below five-figures since. And all of it, Dreher said, can be attributed directly to A’ja. Her top ESPN recruiting ranking combined with her hometown hero status mobilized so many people to support Gamecocks women’s hoops.

A’ja and South Carolina’s meteoric rise is what “The Freshies” — Staley’s first No. 1 recruiting class — grew up watching. They, and the other highly touted Gamecocks that have followed, saw her and Staley vault South Carolina into the upper echelon of women’s college basketball. Nowadays, you can’t mention the illustrious legacies of UConn, Tennessee and Notre Dame without also talking about USC.

“A’ja was very, very impactful in knowing that we could take a high-caliber high school talent to Final Fours, to national championships,” Staley said. It legitimized our program.”

How A’ja, Staley changed conversations around women’s basketball

A’ja was adamant about having ESPN broadcast her highly anticipated college decision live on one of its stations. If the boys could announce their commitment on live TV, why couldn’t she?

Her request was met with resistance. A’ja wrote of the network’s response in her New York Times Best Selling book “Dear Black Girls”:

“Well, the thing is…”

“We’re not sure if we can get a crew out there on short notice. It might be complicated.”

Nah. Y’all got Google Maps.

I didn’t back down because I wanted all the little girls out there who loved basketball to be flipping channels and saying, “Oh. I see you.”

That was the first instance Eva can remember of A’ja understanding, even if only partially, the impact she could have.

“She has, in her grasp,” Eva said, “the opportunity to show other young people that they can do anything they want to if they put their mind to it.”

Over the next four years, A’ja would mostly look to make a difference in the way she did things. The way she carried herself. The way she played. The way she won.

But once she became a professional basketball player, she took a more vocal approach. She started the A’ja Wilson Foundation to empower dyslexic children. She started speaking out about issues in women’s sports. And she wrote her book.

In it she reflects on life before and during her basketball career. In a few chapters, she spoke on instances of implied racism she encountered during her time at South Carolina:

When we won the NCAA Championship in 2017, you know what we heard almost immediately? …

“Coach Staley doesn’t recruit white players. What’s her problem? Why doesn’t she recruit our white girls?”

You had a team of twelve Black girls working their tails off. No, working their asses off. To achieve history. Under a Black female head coach. And it still felt like a significant part of our community didn’t want to celebrate it fully.

Even as the Gamecocks drew record crowds at CLA — and have led the NCAA in attendance for women the past decade — there were still naysayers.

Much of the national dialogue around South Carolina’s 2017 team questioned the Gamecocks’ success. People around the sport were quick to say USC didn’t look like a national championship team.

That it was lucky Mississippi State knocked UConn out of the tournament. That Staley was a player’s coach. Someone who could recruit well but not necessarily out-scheme opponents.

It’s an assumption Staley still deals with today. The Next published an anonymous coaches poll on March 4 asking them to vote on who they believed to be the best “X’s and O’s” coach. Staley received just two of 75 total votes despite her team’s No. 1 ranking and undefeated record. The Athletic released a similar poll of over 30 coaches last season. It listed Tara Vanderveer, Geno Auriemma, Jeff Walz, Bill Fennelly and Karl Smesko as the top five. Staley fell into the “also receiving votes” group, with the following disclaimer:

“Most coaches interpreted X’s and O’s in terms of offensive scheming, which is why defense-minded head coaches like Dawn Staley and Vic Schaefer weren’t among those often mentioned.”

Point being, the success A’ja and Staley cultivated together as two powerful Black women has sparked conversations about racial bias in and around the sport.

“Women’s basketball is trying to get to a better place than that,” Dreher said, reflecting on A’ja and Staley’s combined influence, “but they just sparked a change.”

A likeness and legacy immortalized in bronze

Feb. 22, 2018. A’ja’s Senior Day. An even more emotional affair than her commitment.

Two Final Fours. One national championship. Four seasons with the nation’s best attendance numbers.

There was much to celebrate. And much to say goodbye to.

Dreher was there, crying alongside seemingly every other person (all 12,834 of them) at CLA ahead of USC’s final home game of the season against LSU.

“Happy tears, sad tears, ‘That’s our girl’ tears” flowed freely. The gameday crew strung white plastic bead necklaces over every seat in the lower bowl as a tribute to A’ja’s late grandmother Rakes, who gifted A’ja her first set of pearls, which she wore during pregame warmups throughout her career.

“Pretty girls always wear pearls,” Rakes told her.

A’ja wore a faux set during the ceremony, as she walked from the tunnel toward Staley at halfcourt with her parents and brother Renaldo, who wore two, while Eva looked to be sporting several strands of the real deal on her neck and ears.

A booming voice read A’ja’s resume over the PA system. She wiped away tears and waved to the enthusiastic crowd before reaching her destination. A’ja towered over Staley as they embraced.

Then-Columbia Mayor Stephen K. Benjamin stepped onto the court. He declared Feb. 22, 2018 “A’ja Wilson Day,” and presented her with a key to the city. A’ja dropped her head and shook it in disbelief.

“It was just a surreal moment,” A’ja said earlier this week, reflecting on her Senior Day. “A young girl that didn’t wanna play basketball, stayed home, and kind of shifted the culture there alongside my teammates.”

In 2021, USC unveiled a bronze statue of her outside the arena.

Only 6% of statues in the United State depict real women, according to UW-La Crosse art professor Sierra Rooney, and even fewer depict real Black women. A’ja’s statue is less than a mile from the State House, which is home to a near-150-year-old Confederate monument.

In her speech at the ceremony unveiling her statue, A’ja shared that her grandmother grew up four blocks from the governor’s mansion and often had to walk by — not through — South Carolina’s campus to get where she was going. In the segregated South, Rakes wasn’t allowed on campus.

“This moment is bigger than me,” A’ja said in her speech. “... If only she was here today to see that the same grounds she had to walk around, it now is the same grounds that houses a statue of her granddaughter.”

In 2020, the United States Census Bureau found 24.8% of South Carolinians identify as Black or African American, which ranks seventh among all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Richland County, where the University of South Carolina sits, is 45.2% Black.

South Carolina women’s basketball games, where a wildly successful Black woman leads predominately Black teams to the sport’s highest heights, have become a gathering place for Columbia’s Black community. A’ja’s decision to become a Gamecock played a huge role in that.

“The story fits,” Staley, whose private donation helped fund A’ja’s statue along with the late Dodie Anderson and Darius Rucker, said. “There’s no better way to sum up what she means to all of us. At all levels. The university, city and the state. There aren’t enough adjectives to describe what she means to our program.”

In the six years since graduating from South Carolina with a degree in mass communications, A’ja has become a best-selling author, a gold medalist with the United States Olympic Team (2021) and a two-time WNBA Champion, MVP and Defensive Player of the Year with the Las Vegas Aces. Last month, she was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2024.

Staley has known A’ja for most of her life, having first set out to watch her play in 2008 — the year Staley first got to USC. She watched A’ja blossom into a generational talent as she grew into her new southern home.

“We possess her,” Staley said, expressing her pride in A’ja as the star’s “second mom” and a 16-year resident of Columbia. “She’s ours. I know the Aces are gonna try to possess her, but she’s ours. She can always come home.”