Kamilla Cardoso stands out in US college basketball – 04/05/2024 – Sport

Kamilla Cardoso arrived at the airport a few days after turning 15.

All her friends from her hometown in Brazil had come with her for an impromptu farewell party. Her old basketball coaches were also there, along with her mother, Janete Soares, and her older sister, Jessica Silva.

When it came time to say goodbye, Cardoso knew that if he said goodbye to everyone in his circle individually, he would start crying. Then, she said goodbye to her friends and coaches as a group. “Bye guys! I love you!” she sang in Portuguese. She reserved the last few minutes before boarding for her mother and sister.

The three were always very close in Montes Claros. Like most younger sisters, Cardoso enjoyed following Silva’s various sporting activities. And like any mother, Soares had a lot of questions when her daughter floated the idea of ​​moving alone more than 4,000 miles away to play high school basketball in Tennessee, with the hopes of eventually pursuing a career in the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association). ). Would Cardoso be safe and cared for? Would she have people to support her? Would this plan work?

“OK,” Cardoso said emotionally to Soares e Silva that day in 2016, preparing to board. “I have to go. Otherwise, I won’t be able to get on this plane.”

As Cardoso found her seat for the flight, she didn’t know when she would see her family again. She was headed to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to play under coach Keisha Hunt at Hamilton Heights Christian Academy. Hunt had a reputation for developing top-notch youth and high school talent, including point guard Raven Johnson, now Cardoso’s teammate at South Carolina. Cardoso knew it was the right choice, but it was still nerve-wracking.

On the second leg of his trip, a 10-hour flight from São Paulo to Atlanta, Cardoso cried again. She worried that she only knew three words in English: “hi”, “yes” and “goodbye”. Four, if she counted “McDonald’s.” She worried about missing home.

“Now look at her,” Hunt said last month, some eight years later. “I’m so proud of her.”

On Friday, South Carolina will face North Carolina in the Final Four, as Dawn Staley’s unbeatable team seeks its third national title since 2017. Cardoso is the undisputed heart and soul of the Gamecocks — at 7-foot-1, its leading scorer and rebounder, and the most dominant defender in the Southeastern Conference. Perhaps the best defender in the country.

But it wasn’t easy to get to this point — with mistakes along the way.

During the SEC Tournament title game in March, tensions were rising between Cardoso and Louisiana State star Angel Reese as they jockeyed for position in the paint. Reese pulled Cardoso’s hair, and the broadcast showed the two stars arguing during the game. With two minutes remaining, LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson pushed South Carolina’s Ashlyn Watkins. Cardoso flew up and pushed Johnson, who fell to the ground. Members of both teams invaded the court.

Cardoso was ejected, along with the reserves who joined in the chaos, and was suspended from South Carolina’s game against Presbyterian in the first round of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) tournament.

“I can’t change the past, but I can learn from it,” Cardoso said of the incident. “And I’m human. I’m going to make mistakes every day. I feel like I let my emotions get the best of me at that moment, and from now on, I’m going to learn to control that and let the referees do their job.”

When the Gamecocks advanced to their second-round game against North Carolina, Cardoso was emotional. She wiped away tears as the home crowd gave her a thunderous ovation during introductions at Colonial Life Arena, in a game that would end up being her last there. She scored 12 points and grabbed 10 rebounds as the Gamecocks beat the Tar Heels by nearly 50 points.

Cardoso is one of the biggest scoring problems in college basketball — a force with a rare combination of size and speed — who can punish anyone on any given day. However, he wasn’t always a threat in the paint.

The first time she wore the Hamilton Heights shirt, the level of physical demand surprised her.

“The difference between playing basketball in Brazil and playing basketball here, in Brazil, we do it for fun,” she said, adding: “A lot of kids running up and down.”

“So when I got to the United States, I had to play my first game. All I had was being tall and being able to shoot baskets. But other than that, I had no other skills. I thought, maybe I’m not meant to play here .”

Cardoso grew up enjoying football, volleyball and swimming and diving more than basketball, but decided to try the sport after her sister’s coach saw her watching practice from the stands and recommended she give it a try. Cardoso agreed. Turns out she loved it. She began playing in high school in Brazil, then earned a scholarship to a private school as she became a better player. From there, she began competing in tournaments, which attracted the attention of agents.

Cardoso’s original plan was to play in Portugal — still on another continent, but at least somewhere where she could still speak her native Portuguese.

“Then this agent came up again and said, ‘Well, I don’t think Portugal is the best place for you. You’re 6’2. You’re 14 years old. You should go play in the United States. You have the potential to do that. there,'” said Cardoso.

Hunt first heard about Cardoso when an assistant coach at the college level sent a message about a player in Brazil who was heading to the United States, most likely somewhere in Florida, with WNBA aspirations. Hunt received a video of Cardoso from three years earlier, when she was about 12 years old.

“The first thing I noticed was how fast she was running back and forth across the court. She was probably 6’1″ at that age,” Hunt said. “She missed a few shots, but she was trying hard everywhere, getting rebounds. She just didn’t have the shooting ability yet.”

Cardoso enrolled at Hamilton Heights, a small private school, in 2016.

“We really had to work on my defense, dribbling and things like that,” Cardoso said. “I was being pushed in training. Everyone was very physical. In Brazil, we didn’t have any of that.”

It took Cardoso about five months to adapt, Hunt said. On the court, Hunt and Cardoso’s teammates often called plays in Portuguese so she could understand her role — something Staley and the Gamecocks also did in their early years with the program. It was only last year, Cardoso said, that she felt completely comfortable in English.

Off the court, Cardoso still regularly yearned for home. She called daily to tell her mother and sister about her new experiences. But about four months later, she noticed that she had started to feel less sad. She lived with Hunt, Hunt’s daughter Treasure (currently a point guard at Arizona State) and three teammates from Nigeria, all of whom communicated with her through Google Translate and helped her with her schoolwork.

“I felt like: oh, they are welcoming me. They want to help me,” Cardoso said. “I became very close to the girls who lived with me, so it was like I had a second family, a family away from home. It was incredible. I learned a lot of different cultures. They are the reason why I know English today.”

Cardoso has become a five-star recruit and the nation’s No. 5 prospect in the 2020 class, according to ESPN’s recruiting rankings. She initially signed with Syracuse University out of high school, in part because of a connection to the coaching staff through one of her contacts in Brazil, Hunt said. But she transferred to South Carolina — one of its finalists in the original recruiting process — before the 2021-22 season to play with Staley.

“Kamilla could have gone anywhere in the country, but she chose to come here,” Staley recently told reporters. “She trusted us enough to come here and continue her career. It means the world.”

Cardoso was still far from home. She had visited in the summers and holidays, most recently spending three days in Brazil around Christmas. But her mother and sister had never seen her play basketball in the United States.

Staley wanted to change that. She and others in South Carolina quietly asked Rep. James Clyburn for help in getting visas approved for Soares and Silva.

At the end of practice on March 2, Staley launched into a speech about Cardoso and all the sacrifices she had made to play basketball so far from home.

“When she started talking, I was crying and I thought: I don’t even want to hear it anymore because I’m going to cry even more. I looked at the door. And there were my mother and my sister,” said Cardoso.

Underneath a hot pink headband, she buried her face in her hands and cried again as she approached them for a family hug. The next day, she scored 18 points and grabbed 14 rebounds in 24 minutes en route to a 76-68 victory over Tennessee, as South Carolina closed the regular season at a perfect 29-0.

“This is a dream come true,” Cardoso said of time with his family.

The following week, she hit the first 3-point shot of her career in the SEC championship as South Carolina stunned Tennessee at the clock.

Cardoso’s time in South Carolina is almost up. She announced on Monday that she would enter this year’s WNBA draft.

“I’m excited to see what the future holds and I can’t wait to see where the next chapter takes me,” she wrote in her Instagram post.

Cardoso has come a long way from the scared 15-year-old, homesick and needing Google Translate for everyday life. Soares and Silva could also be seeing more of her games. Both had their visas extended for ten years, so they can come to the United States and stay for three months at a time, Cardoso said.

“I think I have a lot more under my belt,” she said. “I just need to keep my confidence and believe in myself more.”