WBB coverage delivered straight to your inbox<\/a>!<\/p>\nStaley said that sometimes her younger point guards aren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
But that does not mean you coddle them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost like parenting,\u201d Staley said. \u201cLike if you hover over them all the time and they can\u2019t work through problems, they\u2019re going to have issues. You\u2019ve got to let them work through problems because they\u2019re working through the things you\u2019ve instilled in them. That\u2019s the same thing with point guard play for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHenny? Oh my gosh, she used to beat me up,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt was hard guarding her. I had to guard her as a freshman, and I remember, I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t think I belong here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, working with them made Johnson a better player. Sutton said with each new generation of point guard at South Carolina, the level rises.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sutton said that Staley\u2019s coaching style helps tremendously as a player. To this day, she still aspires to be like her former collegiate coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cShe allows us to be who we are,\u201d Sutton said. \u201cIn doing so, we\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recently, Sutton has mentored players like Notre Dame\u2019s Hannah Hidalgo and currently coaches high school basketball in her home state of New Jersey.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watching Johnson play is fun for Sutton as she sees some of the lessons she learned at South Carolina in the senior Gamecock.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I learned from Coach Staley is to see the game before certain things happen. That\u2019s why I love watching Raven play. She doesn\u2019t even need to look over at coach to know exactly what the team needs in certain moments,\u201d Sutton said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Beyond the court, Johnson\u2019s seniors helped her grow as a person. Additionally, they helped her through the hardest moments of her career.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Johnson tore her ACL during her freshman season in 2021, they remained by her side.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd 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,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThat matters. People before you just dropping off the torch to other people. I think Mouse [McDaniel] is going to be ready when it\u2019s her turn.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, McDaniel isn\u2019t looking ahead to that torch passing right now. She said ahead of South Carolina\u2019s second-round matchup that, while it is on her mind, she is focused on the remaining games toward a national championship for the Gamecocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in a good position right now where we have a good amount of games in front of us,\u201d McDaniel said. \u201cI can\u2019t think too far into the future.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLike, all games, we play in front of a big crowd, whether we\u2019re going to an away game or playing at home,\u201d McDaniel said. \u201cShe just taught me a lot about being calm, getting through the storm. It\u2019s a lot being a one guard, especially a one guard here, and being another extension of coach.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The legacy Raven Johnson will leave behind at South Carolina goes beyond her career averages. It goes beyond…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,465],"class_list":{"0":"post-693331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-womens-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116333502395576801","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}