Chloe Kitts’ ACL Comeback Could Fix South Carolina’s Most Glaring Offensive Hole
South Carolina put together a run to a third straight national championship game without Chloe Kitts last season. Now she’s coming back — and the specific skill she brings addresses exactly the weakness that surfaced when it mattered most.
A promising junior year cut short
Kitts put together an impressive junior season, with genuine expectations for an even better senior campaign to follow. Then, on a rebound in practice last October, she tore her ACL, and every bit of that momentum took a hard turn. Beyond her production, the 6-foot-2 forward brought intangibles Dawn Staley clearly valued — hustle plays, consistent rebounding, and a work ethic best illustrated by voluntarily lifting weights on game days, when it wasn’t required of her. Those aren’t box-score traits, but they’re exactly the kind of habits that shape a program’s culture, and their absence is harder to quantify than missing points or rebounds.
The specific hole her return fills
What makes Kitts’ comeback particularly significant isn’t just her overall talent — it’s her mid-range game, an area where South Carolina’s post players struggled badly without her. During her 2024-25 junior season, Kitts shot 36.5% from mid-range, a full 3.2 percentage points above the Division I average, according to CBB Analytics. That number becomes even more meaningful set against what South Carolina got from that same area of the floor last season. Joyce Edwards, the team’s leading scorer at 19.2 points per game, shot just 30.4% from mid-range. Madina Okot, who averaged 12.8 points and an excellent 44.8% from three, shot only 18.4% from that same mid-range zone — a stark split that shows a player who can be lethal from distance but genuinely uncomfortable in the in-between areas of the floor.
Where that gap actually cost South Carolina
The clearest evidence of this weakness came in the national championship game itself. In South Carolina’s 79-51 loss to UCLA, the Gamecocks shot just 20% from mid-range, part of an overall 29% shooting performance that wasn’t strong anywhere on the floor — but the mid-range specifically stood out as a missed opportunity given the matchup. Facing UCLA’s 6-foot-7 Lauren Betts patrolling the paint, South Carolina had a clear tactical alternative available: creating more offense around the elbows rather than repeatedly forcing the ball through traffic at the rim. Instead, the Gamecocks attempted just 10 total shots from just inside the three-point line all game — a strikingly low number for a team facing a rim protector that size, and a clear missed adjustment that a healthy Kitts likely would have helped correct.
Why her range changes the whole offense, not just her own shot
Kitts’ return does more than add a scorer back to the rotation — it fundamentally changes how South Carolina’s offense can be structured. Her mid-range shooting threat doesn’t just punish defenses directly; it spreads the floor, which matters enormously with Edwards still developing as a finisher at the rim. The further out Kitts is able to operate, the more effective South Carolina’s high-low action becomes, since a credible mid-range threat prevents defenses from simply doubling and clogging the paint against the team’s rim-focused scorers.
A complete offensive skill set, not a one-dimensional shooter
Kitts’ value extends well beyond the mid-range, too. She’s also a legitimate threat in the paint on shots that aren’t at the rim, converting 52.5% of those attempts — 14.4 percentage points above the Division I average. At the rim itself, she shot 62.3%, five points above average. That’s a rare three-level scoring profile for a post player, and it fits neatly into a roster Staley has built with real positional flexibility: eight post players, none of them a true, traditional center, but all capable of playing that role. That depth gives South Carolina the freedom to mix and match combinations without being boxed into a single offensive structure — a flexibility that becomes even more valuable now that Kitts has also developed a genuine three-point shot during her junior year.
How she likely slots back into the lineup
Staley does have the option to go bigger, sliding Kitts out to the wing alongside various post combinations inside. But the more probable path is simpler: Kitts reclaiming her starting spot alongside Edwards and three-point specialist Tessa Johnson. The fit with those two specifically is easy to see in the numbers. Edwards took 49.6% of her total shot attempts at the rim last season, converting 72.7% of them — elite finishing, but heavily concentrated in one area of the floor. Johnson, meanwhile, shot 48.2% from three, nearly 18 percentage points above the Division I average — elite, but from the opposite end of the shot spectrum.
That leaves a clear gap in the middle of the floor between Edwards’ rim-finishing and Johnson’s perimeter shooting — precisely the space Kitts’ mid-range game is built to occupy. Her presence doesn’t just add a talented player back to the rotation; it adds a much-needed third scoring layer to the starting lineup, one that directly complements, rather than overlaps with, what Edwards and Johnson already provide.
