South Carolina women's basketball: Could A'ja Wilson's career scoring record fall? Joyce Edwards has a shot

Joyce Edwards began her college career as probably the most decorated recruit in South Carolina history. After two seasons, she is already rewriting the Gamecock record book.

Last season, Edwards became the fastest player in program history to score 1,000 career points. She reached the milestone in her 64th career game. That’s faster than A’ja Wilson (69th game) and Sheila Foster (68th game), the top two scorers in program history. 

The fastest players in program history to reach 1,000 points are Katrina Anderson (47 games), Beth Hunt (48 games), Denise Nanney (57 games), and Johnson (59 games), but they didn’t reach the milestone as sophomores. 

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Anderson and Hunt were transfers who only played their junior and senior seasons at South Carolina. Only Edwards, Wilson, and Foster were sophomores.

Edwards averaged over 20 points for most of last season, which would have made her just the third Gamecock in the last 30 years to average over 20 points. Wilson averaged 22.6 points in 2017-18, and Jocelyn Penn scored 23.9 points in 2002-03.

Edwards fell short of that mark, but still averaged 19.2 points, which was good for 12th on South Carolina’s single-season scoring list.

But Edwards did set the program record for total points, with 768. She passed the old record of 754 by Katrina Anderson, a record that had stood since 1978. That monster season has Edwards poised to climb the career lists. 

Edwards already has 27 career 20-point games, which is 10th all-time at South Carolina. She had 22 last season, which tied for the single-season record.

Edwards also has a career average of 16.0 points. Her career average ranks 10th all-time, but it’s the total points everyone will be watching for the next two seasons.

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Edwards already has 1,262 career points. That puts her over halfway to Wilson’s program record of 2,389 points (52.8% of the way, to be exact). Edwards needs 1,127 points over the next two seasons to tie Wilson.

That means she only needs to average 563.5 points over the next two seasons to tie Wilson. Edwards has played 39 and 40 games in her first two seasons, when South Carolina played in the national championship game. 

If we conservatively project Edwards to play 37 games per season, she has to average 15.3 points to break the record. If she plays the maximum of 40 games each season, Edwards only has to average 14.1 points to break the record.

Last season, South Carolina did not have much bench production for most of the season, which meant Edwards had to play 30.6 minutes, a big jump from the 21.3 she played as a freshman. South Carolina has added a lot of depth this offseason, so Edwards isn’t going to play 30 minutes again or score as much. Dawn Staley has said that ideally Edwards would play 27 or 28 minutes, which is plenty of time to get 15.3 points.

Edwards also has 467 career rebounds. That puts her on pace to grab 934 boards, which would rank seventh on South Carolina’s career list.

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