NCAAW: Te-Hina Paopao making big contributions early for South Carolina

Despite losing a massive amount of talent to the WNBA Draft last spring, South Carolina has started the 2023-24 NCAA season looking as dangerous as ever. Give credit to senior point guard Te-Hina Paopao, whose leadership and skillset have kept the Gamecocks from missing a beat.

• By
  
  Eric Nemchock
  
• on December 3, 2023 4:00 pm

The South Carolina Gamecocks (7-0) are once again on top of the world of college basketball, with big early-season wins over the Maryland Terrapins and Notre Dame Fighting Irish earning them the top overall spot in the AP rankings.

These aren’t the same Gamecocks that went 129-9 over four seasons, either. South Carolina lost five rotation players—including one of the program’s all-time greats, Aliyah Boston—to the 2023 WNBA Draft, making the overhauled Gamecocks’ immediate success all the more impressive. In roles significantly larger than in previous seasons, sophomore guard Raven Johnson has been a walking highlight reel, while center Kamilla Cardoso ranks in the top-10 in both rebounds and blocks per game.

It’s been senior guard Te-Hina Paopao, though, who has held everything together. Paopao, a 5-foot-9 transfer from Oregon, has made a seamless transition in her first season at South Carolina, bringing much-needed leadership to a program in flux while maintaining the steady play that has made her one of the country’s most reliable point guards.

That reliability, in addition to on-court leadership that has kept the young, new-look Gamecock roster together and a skillset that has allowed South Carolina to lean into a new offensive identity, has made Paopao one of the 2023-24 season’s earliest success stories. We briefly highlighted her as a WNBA Draft-eligible player to watch a few weeks ago, but Paopao’s game deserves a deeper dive.

Honors and statistics

Originally from Oceanside, CA, Paopao was ranked as the No. 11 overall prospect (No. 4 guard) in the 2020 recruiting class by ESPN’s HoopGurlz. She committed to Oregon as part of a highly-touted group of recruits that also included Kylee Watson, Maddie Scherr, Angela Dugalic and Sydney Parrish.

Of the group, Paopao clearly was the most ready for Division I basketball. As a freshman and full-time starter, she averaged 10.2 points, 4.4 assists and 1.4 steals per game, earning All-Pac-12 and Pac-12 All-Freshman honors.

Paopao’s production remained consistent over her next two seasons at Oregon. She averaged better than 13 points, four rebounds, three assists and one steal per game as both a sophomore and junior, and shot 42.4 percent on 3-pointers in her third and final season as a Duck. She was also named to the All-Pac-12 Team two more times, once as a first-teamer and once as an honorable…