South Carolina Women's Basketball

2022 was the year of South Carolina women’s basketball: the team won their second national title in April, and then one of their most famous alums, A’ja Wilson, won the WNBA MVP award and her first WNBA championship. The women’s college basketball landscape has long been dominated by stalwarts like UConn, but South Carolina has blown open the doors of women’s basketball, establishing itself as the next great power in the sport.

A’ja Wilson getting her title was nice, but South Carolina defeating UConn in the title game has to go down as the biggest moment for this fandom. It was Dawn Staley’s second title as a coach, but there’s something a little more special about this one, since it came via taking down the best program in the sport’s history. And Aliyah Boston, the best player in women’s college basketball last year, was able to cap her season off with the NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player award.

There’s a picture of Aliyah Boston crying at the 2021 Final Four, and that photo came to be used a lot by the media last year. Whether it was by choice or just because of a lack of available WBB photos, the picture of Boston in pain after the loss kept popping up, something a lot of South Carolina WBB Twitter—and WBB Twitter as a whole—took issue with, as it painted Boston as a kind of tragic figure instead of celebrating her for the great season she was having. But Boston and SC had the last laugh, as she led the team to their second title.