[2006alum]

Haley Jones was the #1 overall recruit, Fran and Ashten were #3 at their positions, and I would match up Kiana and Lexie against Harris and Herbert Harrigan any day. I would argue there's not too much difference in raw talent between our teams

Don't know if you missed it but Jones is injured.  I think we would have a decent chance against South Carolina with our entire starting line-up healthy against their starting line-up.

BC

As we've discussed in the past, there's a kind of logarithmic addition that takes place when folding in recruits farther down the rankings. The Gamecocks brought in recruits ranked 3, 4, 10, and 11; that is meaningfully better than recruits ranked 1, 15, 19, and 50. And as BC said, scratch our #1 recruit for current purposes. Right now, our only active consensus top 10 recruit is Kiana Williams (Lexie wasn't even a McD's A-A).

And it was very clear even from last spring that Aaliyah Boston was likely to be the single most impactful recruit. She is the best looking frosh post player I've seen since Breanna Stewart in terms of being able to do it all. What freshman post has a 1:1 A:TO ratio, more steals than TOs, and twice the blocks as TOs? 

It's also worth noting that coaches like Dawn and Kelly Graves tend to stack recruiting classes and then have lull years with 0-1 meaningful recruits or else a significant number of sophomore or junior out-transfers. Tara has stated one of her chief missions is to always use all scholarships where possible, and very few transfer out (and even fewer transfer in to) Stanford. So that means balance, a coaching style that develops players over four years, and prioritizes seniority. It also means you won't see flash in the pan booms and busts the way SC has been over the past 6 years.

[2006alum]

Haley Jones was the #1 overall recruit, Fran and Ashten were #3 at their positions, and I would match up Kiana and Lexie against Harris and Herbert Harrigan any day. I would argue there's not too much difference in raw talent between our teams

Don't know if you missed it but Jones is injured.  I think we would have a decent chance against South Carolina with our entire starting line-up healthy against their starting line-up.

BC

As we've discussed in the past, there's a kind of logarithmic addition that takes place when folding in recruits farther down the rankings. The Gamecocks brought in recruits ranked 3, 4, 10, and 11; that is meaningfully better than recruits ranked 1, 15, 19, and 50. And as BC said, scratch our #1 recruit for current purposes. Right now, our only active consensus top 10 recruit is Kiana Williams (Lexie wasn't even a McD's A-A).

And it was very clear even from last spring that Aaliyah Boston was likely to be the single most impactful recruit. She is the best looking frosh post player I've seen since Breanna Stewart in terms of being able to do it all. What freshman post has a 1:1 A:TO ratio, more steals than TOs, and twice the blocks as TOs? 

It's also worth noting that coaches like Dawn and Kelly Graves tend to stack recruiting classes and then have lull years with 0-1 meaningful recruits or else a significant number of sophomore or junior out-transfers. Tara has stated one of her chief missions is to always use all scholarships where possible, and very few transfer out (and even fewer transfer in to) Stanford. So that means balance, a coaching style that develops players over four years, and prioritizes seniority. It also means you won't see flash in the pan booms and busts the way SC has been over the past 6 years.