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Mad Kiki: Herbert Harrigan has their back
Herbert Harrigan backs her team, leads Gamecocks to SEC title
Somewhere in the pandemonium of South Carolina’s post-SEC Tournament championship celebration, Dawn Staley found Mikiah Herbert Harrigan.
“I know you didn’t envision this a few months ago,” the coach told her.
“I didn’t,” the senior replied. “But now I’m a believer.”
Long before that, South Carolina fans believed in the player now known as Mad Kiki.
Herbert Harrigan, a ferocious defender and lethal shooter, was South Carolina’s wild card entering this season. But when the cards were dealt, she turned up aces.
Entering the NCAA Tournament she led the team in points per game (13.1) and was second in rebounds (5.6) and blocks per game (1.6).
She averaged 14.6 points per game in the SEC Tournament and took home Most Outstanding Player honors.
“I think Mad Kiki is the best Kiki,” senior Ty Harris said. “She gets real mad and then she starts playing harder. I mean, that’s just who she is. She sticks up for her teammates. It gets the crowd riled up.”
No moment was more “Mad Kiki” than just before halftime in the championship game when South Carolina center Aliyah Boston and Mississippi State’s Yemiyah Morris got tangled up underneath the basket. Herbert Harrigan rushed over and got in the face of Morris, someone four inches taller than her.
“I just gotta stick up for my teammates. I’m not going to let anybody try them. So I’m gonna be there for them,” Herbert Harrigan said. “I just didn’t like what she said.”
Technical fouls were given to both players.
“Kiki, she wants all the smoke,” Staley said after the game, referring to her player’s uncanny ability to find herself in the middle of chaos. “She wants it all.
“[But] for us, I think Kiki has a real good understanding of how she needs to play, what needs to get done. We’ve been through that, like, three years ago with Kiki. She’s the only question mark when it comes to that. She has it under control.
“We just explain to her what she means to our team. If we lose her, we lose a big part of what we do and who we are.”
Said Herbert Harrigan, “That emotion does help fuel my game.”
By Josh Hyber | Staff writer • Photo by Artie Walker Jr.
It fueled her to six blocks in the tournament, including one in the championship game that was emphasized by a dramatic head roll. It fueled her to 15 rebounds.
Just over a minute after the fuss, Herbert Harrigan blocked a shot by Mississippi State’s Jordan Danberry. Though she was subbed out moments later, Herbert Harrigan scored nine points and blocked a shot in the third quarter.
The “Mad Kiki” moniker took off on social media as the regular season wound down, and it quickly made its way onto T-shirts.
“Kiki is always gonna go. She’s got your back no matter what,” junior guard LeLe Grissett told The State. “But Mad Kiki, that’s different right there.”
As Staley referred, Herbert Harrigan was not always a believer. It’s widely known she considered transferring from South Carolina before this season. But as she said before the season, she knew deep down being a Gamecock was what she wanted, and she broke down crying when she told Staley she wanted to come back.
“We can go back a few months, when she said this isn’t the place she wants to be, this place doesn’t make her happy,” Staley said after the SEC Tournament final.
Now it’s the complete opposite.
Herbert Harrigan flashed her wide smile and said after the title win, “This was great. It’s just really fun out there playing with this group of girls. We have a lot of fun together playing. That makes it a hundred times better.”
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