South Carolina Basketball: Ranking the top-12 shooting guards in Gamecock history
By Kevin Miller
South Carolina Basketball’s No. 10 Greatest Shooting Guard of All-Time:
AJ Lawson
AJ Lawson (2018-2021) was a skinny kid from Canada who left high school early to enroll at the University of South Carolina. He was extremely consistent while in Columbia as he averaged almost identical numbers all three seasons he was in college. Lawson was an athletic and long wing at 6’6″ and was an important piece on an offense that only had two real plays: “get the ball in the post” or “get the ball to AJ.”
Lawson opened things up for other players with his ability to shoot from outside and effectively drive the basketball. After a couple of years of struggling, Hassani Gravett won the conference’s Sixth Man of the Year award once Lawson arrived on campus, and post players Chris Silva and Maik Kotsar were much more efficient offensive players after 00 arrived as reinforcements.
Unfortunately, Lawson’s value to the Gamecocks might have been best seen through his absence. After spraining his ankle and missing some time at the end of the the 2018-2019 season, South Carolina basketball went from the NCAA Tournament bubble to missing both the NCAA Tournament and NIT in just two weeks’ time. Lawson left Carolina after three seasons to pursue an NBA career, and he is still in the League today.