{"id":824985,"date":"2025-02-03T17:57:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T22:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=824985"},"modified":"2025-02-03T17:57:48","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T22:57:48","slug":"south-carolina-retires-aja-wilsons-no-22-jersey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wnba\/south-carolina-retires-aja-wilsons-no-22-jersey\/","title":{"rendered":"South Carolina Retires A&#8217;ja Wilson&#8217;s No. 22 Jersey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One of the greatest, period. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>WNBA M&#8217;VP A&#8217;ja Wilson had her No. 22 jersey retired at her alma mater, South Carolina, this past Sunday to a sold out Colonial Life Arena. The event took place as the current squad faced off against Auburn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the most decorated Gamecock basketball player of all-time, Wilson was overwhelmed with emotion to say the least.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cTo have my jersey retired at the University of South Carolina, the place where my dreams began is an honor I can hardly put into words.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">What do you say when greatness has been displayed from start to finish? A\u2019ja Wilson the hometown kid who is officially a hometown legend \u2b50\ufe0f <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/F9tSYbKLl1\">pic.twitter.com\/F9tSYbKLl1<\/a><\/p>&mdash; WSLAM (@wslam) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wslam\/status\/1886542505505706025?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 3, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>A\u2019ja Wilson attended the University of South Carolina from 2014-2018 where she dominated, earning four straight SEC tournament championships, three SEC POTY awards and led the school in both points and blocks amongst countless other accolades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She also shared her appreciation of the Colombia community: \u201cIt\u2019s a privilege to be a gamecock, to be a part of this community&#8230;One of the greatest honors of my life was representing Garnet and Black.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alongside A\u2019ja was the one and only Dawn Staley, head coach of&nbsp; the Gamecocks. Staley shared more on her relationship with A\u2019ja in an interview with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wistv.com\/video\/2025\/01\/30\/dawn-staley-celebrates-aja-wilson-ahead-jersey-retirement\/\">Colombia\u2019s WIS News<\/a> ahead of the ceremony.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNothing makes me more proud than when A\u2019ja gets her flowers.. She\u2019s the best, The very best. There is no one better than A\u2019ja Wilson and what she is bringing to the table.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following a big thank you to both her parents and <em>her favorite Olympian from out of town<\/em>, Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo, Wilson was able to see her jersey unravel in the rafters and was visibly emotional.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAs I will look up in the rafters and see my jersey, I&#8217;m reminded how important it is to chase your dreams without fear.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the greatest, period. WNBA M&#8217;VP A&#8217;ja Wilson had her No. 22 jersey retired at her alma mater, South Carolina, this past Sunday to a sold out Colonial Life Arena. The event took place as the current squad faced off against Auburn. As the most decorated Gamecock basketball player of all-time, Wilson was overwhelmed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":544,"featured_media":824987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[11149,65353,2116,1863],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-824985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wnba","tag-aja-wilson","tag-aja-wilson-jersey-retirement","tag-south-carolina-gamecocks","tag-wnba"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/544"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824985"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":824991,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824985\/revisions\/824991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824985"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=824985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}