Dawn Staley Reveals Personal Chat With A’ja Wilson’s Mom After Terrible South Carolina Debut
Las Vegas Aces center A’ja Wilson won two WNBA championships within her first seven seasons in the league, but it took a while for her to reach that level of success.
Her college coach, Dawn Staley agrees. Coming into college, Wilson was regarded as a top prospect. However, in her collegiate debut with Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks, she only scored four points and went 2-7 from the field.
“She started her debut, and it was terrible,” Staley recalled during Thursday’s edition of the “The Breakfast Club.” She also described her performance as “scrub-like.”
Wilson’s family reacted the same way to her disappointing debut.
“It took some time where they were like, ugh,” Staley added.
Following a rough first outing, Staley knew she had to move Wilson out of the starting lineup and decided to tell her mother first. She also knew she would be heavily criticized for the decision due to Wilson’s status as one of the country’s top prospects.
“Her mom was like, ‘You sure,’ and I’m like, ‘You’re going to have to trust me on this one,’” Staley said.
Sending Wilson to the bench ended up being her best decision. In her next 14 appearances, Wilson got in a groove and scored at least 10 points in each of those games. Furthermore, she scored 23 points against Savannah State in a Dec. 2014 matchup.
“At the end of her freshman year, she was the National rookie of the year, first team all SEC and was rookie of the year in the SEC,” Staley continued. “She got all the accolades coming off the bench.”
According to Staley, what helped Wilson develop was believing in her coach.
“Young people believe in you,” the head coach said. “When this reciprocated, I believed in her and knew she would be the one to take us to that next level.”
Staley’s belief proved true as Wilson led South Carolina to the school’s first national championship in 2016-17 before winning the SEC Player of the Year in 2017-18. However, to help Wilson reach that level Staley needed to teach her some tough love.
“She needed to be roughed up a little bit to get her ready for what she will face,” the Gamecocks head coach said.
Staley noted that she believes Wilson can deal with all the criticism that comes with being a professional athlete after spending four seasons in her system.
“Now she deals with all the critics,” Staley said. “But I know she can handle all that because we took her through all of [it].”
