CLEVELAND — When MiLaysia Fulwiley first arrived on South Carolina’s campus last offseason, the last time she hadn’t started a basketball game was when she was in the seventh grade (playing for the high school varsity team). She didn’t remember what it was like to not have her name called over the PA system in the starting lineup. Couldn’t really recall a time when she had watched the tip from anywhere other than the floor.
But then she got to South Carolina. And the player who had been the No. 13 recruit in her class, who had scored more than 3,000 points in high school and won four state titles was now surrounded by players … exactly like her. In that world, she learned what it was like to not have her name called with the starters. What the view of the tip was like from the bench. What it felt like to be a reserve.
“It was humbling,” Fulwiley said. “It was very, very humbling.”
On Friday night, when the Gamecocks took down NC State 78-59 in the Final Four to advance to Sunday’s national title game against Iowa, that’s where her evening began — sitting a few spots down from Dawn Staley, anxiously awaiting her shot to get into the game.
It took seven minutes of play for Staley to turn to her bench and motion to Fulwiley to lose the warmup shirt and get…
