But there was a point in the second half when South Carolina coach Dawn Staley had to pull her standout sophomore out of the game and talk to her. Staley didn’t like what she was seeing defensively from Fulwiley.
South Carolina was in a tight game, trailing at two different moments in the fourth quarter. Staley wanted to get her point across and didn’t have time to mince words.
“She’s grown to the fact where it gets hot, it gets hot,” Staley said. “Everything is not spoken in a soft tone. Kitchen gets hot when you’re trying to survive in the NCAA Tournament.”
Fulwiley’s talent has never been a question, she’s the best pure scorer on South Carolina’s roster. Her weakness, at times, was maintaining consistency and recovering from coaches’ criticism, but against Maryland she showed growth.
Fulwiley took what Staley said to heart, made the correction and went back in to seal the game for the Gamecocks. She scored a game-high 23 points, 11 of them in the fourth quarter.
As a freshman last season, she wouldn’t have been able to bounce back from that. There would’ve been times, even early this season, when that coaching would’ve derailed her whole game. In this moment, though, she showed the growth Staley has wanted to see. “She took it and found a way to really respond. I’m most proud of that,” Staley said.
That’s the Fulwiley experience, though.
(2) UConn vs. (1) South Carolina
The 2025 Women’s National Championship is set 🏆 pic.twitter.com/R9yXsnFNRr
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) April 5, 2025
At any point, Fulwiley’s capable of taking a game over with her speed, ballhandling and ability to take defenders off the dribble to make a play, either for herself or a teammate. But there are also the turnovers and missed defensive assignments that can put her back on the bench.
The growth for Fulwiley comes in how she’s been handling both of those situations during the NCAA Tournament, and it’s her own realizations that are paying off right now as South Carolina enters Sunday’s national championship against UConn. The Gamecocks have a bevy of talented players — so many, in fact, that Fulwiley has come off the bench in all 38 games. Yet as the SEC Sixth Woman of the Year, Fulwiley has been as pivotal as any player in their well-rounded cast.
To be a guard for Staley, an All-American point guard at Virginia in the 1990s, doesn’t mean you have to play exactly like Staley. But she expects her point guards to compete like she did. She wants them to be excellent on both sides of the ball and not take things to heart. Fulwiley has done that this tournament, serving as the Gamecocks’ X factor.
“It’s a mindset of being able to control your thoughts during the game,” Fulwiley said. “I’ve been training my mind to be stronger than my thoughts and my feelings.”
Everybody has an eye-popping moment when watching Fulwiley play. For teammate Sania Feagin, it came when she played against Fulwiley in grassroots youth basketball. “It was always an, ‘Oh, wow’ ...
