By Scott Mammoser
Tyasha Harris was hoping her collegiate career at South Carolina would read like a fairy tale, bookended on both sides with a national title as a freshman and senior. The Gamecocks were the No. 1 ranked team in the nation on that dark day the NCAA Tournament was cancelled, denying her that chance. Now, the 5-foot-10 point guard will have a chance to extend her winning ways with the Dallas Wings, who selected her seventh overall in the WNBA Draft.
“I’m a very competitive person,” Harris told the WNBA media department following the draft. “I know what has been played just as far as players being in the league right now, and I’m, just super excited for the grind and to finally play somewhere that I’ve always dreamed of playing.”
South Carolina went 32-1 this season, undefeated at 16-0 in the SEC, and following its lone loss to Indiana, pulled off 26 straight wins, including dominant efforts over Baylor and UConn. Harris, who dished out 189 assists, was one of four Gamecocks to average about 12 points per game this year, joining 6-foot-5 freshman Aliyah Boston, 5-foot-9 freshman Zia Cooke, and leading scorer Mikiah Herbert Harrigan, who the Minnesota Lynx scooped up with the draft’s sixth selection.
“I think we shocked the world,” said Harris, who is from Indianapolis. “We proved to the world we are a top team and that we deserved to be top. I’m excited to see what the team can do next year because I know that we left a good legacy and tradition. A lot of people didn’t have her (Herbert Harrigan) projected as high, and I’m just so, so happy for her, and I’m so proud, and I love her to death, and I’m just happy that we could go back to back like that.”
Now, Harris will be reunited with former South Carolina players Kaela Davis and Allisha Gray in Dallas. The Wings went 10-24 last season and 27-year-old Kayla Thornton is their oldest player. Dallas also added Oregon forward Satou Sabally and Princeton forward Bella Alarie with the second and fifth selections in the draft.
“It’s going to be really nice,” Harris said of the reunion with her teammates from the 2017 NCAA title team. “I’m just excited because we played together for a year, and I know them, so I’ll get accustomed really well. They can teach me the ropes. It just shows what type of program that we have. It just shows the coaching staff, how well they are being able to develop players. I think this just gives a statement of how well Coach (Dawn) Staley is with her players and how we can all evolve.”
Harris was the second South Carolina player to win the Dawn Staley Award this season, the honor named after her coach as the nation’s top point guard. Tiffany Mitchell had won it for the Gamecocks in 2015, while current Wings guard Moriah Jefferson won it in 2016 with UConn.
“I give a lot of credit to her just because she was a great point guard when she was playing and is very highly decorated,” Harris said of Staley, the Hall of Famer and three-time Olympic gold medalist. “Just every time she talked, she was giving me little nuggets of how to be a great point guard. I took advantage of her. That was one of the reasons why I went to South Carolina, just so I could learn from her and she could help me out to be a better player and a person.”
In addition to her winning the 2017 national title with South Carolina, Harris was also a silver medalist at both the 2017 FIBA Under-19 World Cup in Italy and the 2019 Pan-American Games in Peru.
