NCAA Basketball: The long journey for Seventh Woods to Morgan State

Woods lacked confidence at South Carolina

When a player decides to transfer from one high major school to another and hasn’t gotten get their career off to the greatest start, a lack of confidence usually becomes problematic for them as they attempt to get their career back on track. Why? Well, because they don’t have much success to build on which causes them to doubt themselves in every way imaginable. It is reasonable to believe that they frequently ask themselves questions such as “Are things going to be any better for me here?”, or “Do I really belong on this level.”

Needless to say, thinking about those questions on a daily basis can drive a player insane and affect their productivity on the court (which is the exact opposite of what you want). Ideally, you want to be in a situation where you are simply looking to take the next step in your game and continue on an upward trajectory.

Take Xavier Pinson for instance, sure, he has his flaws but the Chicago, Illinois native has a few impressive seasons under his belt at Missouri and is certainly on the right path as a player (which is why I don’t think that he will put any unnecessary pressure on himself at LSU).

Unlike Pinson, Woods didn’t show much promise at his first school, which leads me to believe that he wasn’t in a great place mentally when he arrived at South Carolina. Yes, he was able to successfully escape a bad situation at UNC and had to be somewhat relieved, but it can be hard to look forward to the future when you don’t think you are making a ton of progress, which I’m sure Woods wholeheartedly believed when he made his transition from UNC to South Carolina.

Back in December of 2020, I wrote an article detailing 3 of my main takeaways from South Carolina’s tough loss to Houston on the road, and one of the takeaways had to do with Woods and his lack of production in the contest. In the article I stated that “As of right now, Woods’ limited offensive repertoire, stiff posture with the ball in his hands, and inability to make decisive moves/get low enough in order to get a step or two on his defenders prohibits him from being able to do his own thing on the floor (when plays break down).”

I also stated that “Additionally, the fact that Woods does not have a clear go-to move that he can turn to when he needs to make something happen, is a major problem at the moment. Why? Well, because when Woods looks confused as he is handling the ball, his defenders have the ability to press up on him, and determine/dictate where he ultimately ends up on the floor.

Woods already has a tendency of standing straight up when he dribbles, so if he was able to lift up for a few seconds, take notice of the relaxed defensive stance of his defenders (due to the fact that they do not view Woods as a competent offensive player), and perform a quick rhythm crossover that would allow him to speed past his defenders, he would be more of a problem offensively (for opposing teams).”

Now that I think about it, Woods probably looked confused and possessed a stiff posture as he was handling the ball because he did not believe in his ability to break down his defenders off the dribble. Perhaps he was in the gym working on a rhythm crossover, hard crossover jab, or any other reliable go-to move, but it never seemed like he had the confidence to bring any of those moves out in game-time situations.

As an outsider, it looked like he was at the point where he didn’t believe that he could do much of anything right on the court and feared that he wouldn’t be able to properly execute a go-to move in order to create opportunities for himself or for his teammates.

It is not required but it is certainly nice to have a point guard that won’t hesitate to make things happen when sets haven’t been run to perfection, and because it never really looked like Woods was sure of himself when he had the ball in his hands, he was unable to give Frank Martin that luxury when he was on the floor.

Yes, Woods did suffer a few injuries during the 2020-21 season, and it is important to note that he was slightly more productive at South Carolina than he was at UNC, but overall it looked like he rarely knew what to do with the ball, and his inability to let his natural instincts and talent do all of the work ultimately prevented him from living up to his full potential at South Carolina.