South Carolina’s 85-48 demolition of Ole Miss on Sunday was business as usual for a Gamecock program that has established itself as the gold standard of women’s college basketball. But buried beneath the lopsided scoreline was perhaps the most telling moment of Raven Johnson’s remarkable senior season — a moment that came not from her own coach, but from the opposing sideline.
Ole Miss head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin, watching her team get systematically dismantled, offered an assessment that cut straight to the heart of what makes Johnson so special: “Raven Johnson doesn’t get the credit that she deserves. I think she is the best point guard in the country.”
Coming from an opposing coach, those words carry extraordinary weight. They also raise an uncomfortable question — if “Coach Yo” can see it so clearly from the other bench, why has it taken the broader basketball world so long to fully appreciate what Johnson brings to the floor?
A Point Guard Built to Win, Not to Impress
Johnson finished Sunday’s game with just six points, a number that would prompt some to overlook her contribution entirely. They would be making a serious mistake. She orchestrated the Gamecock offense to the tune of seven assists while simultaneously suffocating Ole Miss All-American hopeful Cotie McMahon into a nightmarish two-point, 0-for-9 shooting performance. That kind of two-way dominance is extraordinarily rare, yet it has become Johnson’s calling card.
Her game is a throwback in the truest sense — built not around personal statistics but around winning basketball. In an era where individual accolades increasingly drive narratives, Johnson operates as a counterpoint. She makes her team better in ways that don’t always translate neatly into a box score, which is precisely why McPhee-McCuin acknowledged, “Sometimes you don’t see it in the scorebook, but what she does, you can’t teach.”
That sentiment is not mere postgame diplomacy. It is an accurate diagnosis of what separates elite playmakers from merely good ones.
The Numbers Behind the Artistry
For those who require statistical evidence, Johnson provides it in abundance. She is averaging 5.4 assists per game this season while maintaining a 3.4 assist-to-turnover ratio — placing her among just three SEC players above the 2.5 threshold. She has recorded at least five assists on 19 occasions. These are the numbers of a floor general in complete command of her offense.
Her head coach understands this better than anyone. “She makes them go,” Staley has explained, and the data bears this out in striking fashion. South Carolina’s already-elite defense improves from 42.4% to 38.4% in opponent field goal percentage when Johnson is on the floor. When she is active, the Gamecocks surrender just .706 points per possession. When assigned as the primary defender against SEC top-10 scorers, she holds them to a staggering 25% field goal efficiency.
“If you really look at what makes our team go defensively, it starts and ends with Raven,” Staley said plainly.
Those numbers reframe what Johnson’s defense means beyond any individual matchup. She is not merely a good defender — she is a structural pillar upon which one of the nation’s best defenses is built. Her effort against McMahon on Sunday follows a pattern that includes holding Vanderbilt’s Mikayla Blakes to a 9-for-24 shooting night in January and a viral performance against Caitlin Clark in South Carolina’s national championship victory two seasons ago. “Raven’s the very best at it,” Staley said of her ability to pressure ballhandlers. The superlative is earned.
Beyond the Intangibles
The word “intangibles” is often used as a shorthand for qualities that resist measurement. In Johnson’s case, those qualities have a demonstrably tangible impact on outcomes. She has recorded at least three steals in a game 11 times this season. She surfaces in the defining moments of close games — against LSU, she produced a contested layup, an assist, a clutch rebound, and two free throws in the final two minutes to seal the win. Against Texas, she scored in the final 67 seconds in two different ways. These are not the contributions of a complementary piece. They are the actions of a closer.
It is worth noting that Johnson is also averaging just under 10 points per game — a career high — while posting the best shooting splits of her career and reaching double figures in scoring 19 times. The narrative that she cannot score is simply not supported by the evidence.
That broader body of work has not gone unrecognized at the national level. Johnson is one of 10 finalists for the Nancy Lieberman Award, presented annually to the nation’s top point guard, and one of 25 players on the Naismith College Defensive Player of the Year watch list. CBS Sports has argued she has played her way into first-round consideration for the 2026 WNBA Draft.
A Legacy Still Being Written
The context surrounding Johnson’s final season at South Carolina is staggering. She has gone 171-9 across five seasons with the program. During the four seasons she has led the Gamecocks from the point guard position — excluding a true freshman year lost largely to a torn ACL — South Carolina holds a 136-7 record. The program has won five consecutive SEC regular-season championships and will pursue a fourth straight SEC Tournament title next month.
With two regular-season games remaining against Missouri and Kentucky, Johnson has a minimum of four games left in a Gamecock uniform. If history is any guide, however, that number will be closer to 10 or 11, as South Carolina pursues another deep NCAA Tournament run.
The path is clear. What is equally clear is that Raven Johnson — passer, defender, leader, closer — deserves to be at the center of every conversation about what makes this program exceptional. As both Staley and McPhee-McCuin understand, underestimating her has a way of being corrected rather quickly, usually somewhere on the scoreboard.
