{"id":189601,"date":"2025-08-31T16:00:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T16:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/189601\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T16:00:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T16:00:16","slug":"south-carolina-womens-basketball-australian-forward-names-the-gamecocks-a-finalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/189601\/","title":{"rendered":"South Carolina women&#8217;s basketball: Australian forward names the Gamecocks a finalist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Coveted 2026 Australian wing Sitaya Fagan has named South Carolina as one of her finalists.<\/p>\n<p>Along with the Gamecocks, Fagan is still considering Texas and Southern Cal. She made the announcement on social media at around 3:00 am EDT, or 5:00 pm local time, on August 31.<\/p>\n<p>Fagan is considered the most heavily recruited Australian player ever. She held scholarship offers from 26 different NCAA programs, the most ever received by an Australian player.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Fagan first turned heads at the 2024 FIBA U17 World Cup in Mexico. This summer, she helped lead Australia to a silver medal at the 2025 FIBA U19 Women\u2019s World Cup in Brno.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She averaged 12.3 points and 5.8 rebounds during the tournament. Dawn Staley was in Czechia to support Agot Makeer and Ayla McDowell, as well as scout Fagan, who already had a Gamecock offer.<\/p>\n<p>Louisville was the first program to offer Fagan, but others soon followed. Australian players don\u2019t necessarily use the NCAA as a stepping stone to the WNBA, but the interest from major programs, along with the chance to get a college degree, led Fagan to decide to go the college route.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/teams\/south-carolina-gamecocks\/join\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Join GamecockCentral now for $1 your first week and enjoy a complimentary year of The Athletic \u2013 included with your membership.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Because she is Australian, Fagan is not ranked by Rivals or ESPN.<\/p>\n<p>Fagan traveled to the United States in 2024 with Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence, the highest level of what we would consider prep basketball. She is listed anywhere from 6-2 to 6-4 and is an elite defender and superb athlete.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI actually prefer playing defence than offense sometimes,\u201d Fagan told basketball.com.au. \u201cIn my earliest stages, I was like \u2018no, I want to score, I want to drop 20,\u2019 but moving on, you learn that defence wins games.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>South Carolina has never had an Australian player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coveted 2026 Australian wing Sitaya Fagan has named South Carolina as one of her finalists. Along with the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":189602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68,1707],"class_list":{"0":"post-189601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-womens-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115124215892137491","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}