South Carolina Basketball: Aliyah Boston named WNBA’s Rookie of the Month
By Kevin Miller
The WNBA season is in its infancy, but the league still handed out monthly awards for the handful of games played in the month of May. South Carolina basketball alum Aliyah Boston has taken the league by storm and was selected as the WNBA Rookie of the Month.
In the first four games of Boston’s young career, the four-time college All-American has been one of the best players in the professional game. She has averaged 15.8 points per game, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1.3 blocks. She is the first player to ever start her career with at least three double-digit scoring efforts at a 60% efficiency or better. She has now done it in four games.
At this early point in Boston’s professional career, she has exceeded most projections, even though some of those came with lofty expectations. The Virgin Islands native has put up some eye-popping advanced statistics.
Her efficiency numbers really stand out as the #1-overall pick owns a 70.3% true shooting percentage (includes free throws and values each shot for how many points they are worth), an effective field goal percentage/adjusted field goal percentage (values three-pointers as being 3/2 as valuable as two-pointers) of 68.1, an assist-to-turnover ratio of 8/4, a passing efficiency/assist ratio of 14.1 percent, and a player efficiency rating of 20.3.
The wildest thing about Aliyah Boston’s start is that she still has room to get better. She’s less than five games into her professional career, and her style of play fits the pro game better than the college game. With how dominant she was in college, it is difficult to imagine that she could be even more valuable, but that could be a real possibility.
The Fever are not a great team (as evidenced by the fact they owned the #1-overall pick in the 2023 WNBA Draft), but they seem to be getting better each game, largely because of the efforts of their superstar rookie.
For Aliyah Boston, the sky is the limit, and Gamecock fans can’t wait to see just how high she can climb.