The legacy Raven Johnson will leave behind at South Carolina goes beyond her career averages. It goes beyond anything put on a box score.
By the final buzzer of her career, she will have left an indelible mark on South Carolina women’s basketball. She’ll join a list including names like La’Keshia Sutton and assistant coach Khadijah Sessions as one of the great Dawn Staley-coached guards.
But what is in a Dawn Staley point guard? The three-time national championship coach and former WNBA superstar point guard has had her own illustrious career as a player. She even has a point guard of the year award named after her. But what does it mean — and what does it take — to be the point guard on Dawn Staley’s team?
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Staley believes it begins with competitiveness and coachability. To be a great point guard, you have to be prepared for the worst situation at all times.
“We’re trying to familiarize them with situations that, when they arise, they’ve already been through it. That’s my job as a coach,” Staley said.
She said that, as someone who has played the position, being calm through everything is deeply important. Her experience with the position also makes her harder on her group of guards.
“It’s a position in which, if everything goes right, they get all the praise. If everything goes wrong, it’s their fault. And you have to condition them to believe that,” Staley said. “They’re always understanding their responsibility on the floor. And sometimes they can handle it very early in their career.”
However, sophomore guard Maddy McDaniel said the added intensity doesn’t create added pressure.
“It’s not more difficult, it’s just stepping into bigger shoes, a bigger role,” McDaniel said. “You’re the coach on the floor, and she’s just such a high caliber of a coach, and she was such a high caliber of a player, so it comes to the point guard, she definitely expects a lot out of us.”
Staley’s lineage of guards at South Carolina starts with the 2008 signing of Sutton. It is something she is still proud of to this day.
“It’s a privilege to be one of the first recruits for Coach Staley. Just, being one of her first point guards, one of the first people to score 1000 points, to be an all-SEC performer,” Sutton said.
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Staley said that sometimes her younger point guards aren’t ready for that high level of responsibility early in their careers. That creates situations where you have to wait for the process to catch up.
But that does not mean you coddle them.
“It’s almost like parenting,” Staley said. “Like if you hover over them all the time and they can’t work through problems, they’re going to have issues. You’ve got to let them work through problems because they’re working through the things you’ve instilled in them. That’s the same thing with point guard play for us.”
That mindset extends today from her to her seniors, carried from generation to generation. Johnson remembers early in her career how her veteran, Destanni Henderson, would work her in practice.
“Henny? Oh my gosh, she used to beat me up,” Johnson said. “It was hard guarding her. I had to guard her as a freshman, and I remember, I was like, ‘I don’t think I belong here.”
However, working with them made Johnson a better player. Sutton said with each new generation of point guard at South Carolina, the level rises.
Sutton said that Staley’s coaching style helps tremendously as a player. To this day, she still aspires to be like her former collegiate coach.
“She allows us to be who we are,” Sutton said. “In doing so, we’re going to make mistakes, but she allows us to think the game for ourselves before she tries to overcorrect or prevent us from making mistakes.”
Sutton said she credits everything she does and has done to her experience at South Carolina. Since leaving the Gamecocks in 2012, Sutton has travelled a road that carried her from an international career to one of the few women to play for the Harlem Globetrotters.
Recently, Sutton has mentored players like Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo and currently coaches high school basketball in her home state of New Jersey.
Watching Johnson play is fun for Sutton as she sees some of the lessons she learned at South Carolina in the senior Gamecock.
“What I learned from Coach Staley is to see the game before certain things happen. That’s why I love watching Raven play. She doesn’t even need to look over at coach to know exactly what the team needs in certain moments,” Sutton said.
Beyond the court, Johnson’s seniors helped her grow as a person. Additionally, they helped her through the hardest moments of her career.
When Johnson tore her ACL during her freshman season in 2021, they remained by her side.
“And when I got back on the court, you had Zia [Cooke], people like that, make sure I was good. Kierra Fletcher, when she was here, she made sure I was good,” Johnson said. “That matters. People before you just dropping off the torch to other people. I think Mouse [McDaniel] is going to be ready when it’s her turn.”
However, McDaniel isn’t looking ahead to that torch passing right now. She said ahead of South Carolina’s second-round matchup that, while it is on her mind, she is focused on the remaining games toward a national championship for the Gamecocks.
“We’re in a good position right now where we have a good amount of games in front of us,” McDaniel said. “I can’t think too far into the future.”
For now, she is absorbing the lessons her senior teaches her. She said one of the greatest things Johnson has taught her is to be calm through the storm.
“Like, all games, we play in front of a big crowd, whether we’re going to an away game or playing at home,” McDaniel said. “She just taught me a lot about being calm, getting through the storm. It’s a lot being a one guard, especially a one guard here, and being another extension of coach.”