HIGH PERFORMANCE Molly Binetti excels at fine-tuning Dawn Staley’s elite athletes
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By Josh Hyber | Staff writer • Photos by Allen Sharpe
olly Binetti thinks of herself, in a way, as the mechanic of South Carolina women’s basketball. The team’s sports performance coach, she guides, tinkers and strengthens the team’s core — literally — so it can be a well-oiled machine. “We get Ferraris. We get Maseratis,” Binetti told Spurs & Feathers. “[The players are] already coming in in a really good spot, for the most part. They’re strong. They’re fast. They’re athletic. “My job is to just make sure the brakes are tightened a little bit, make sure [their] bodies are strong and make sure we’ve got the wheels aligned.”
When she said that in early March, the high-end players were heading down the home stretch. Binetti and her team were put to the test the following weekend when No. 1 South Carolina played three games in three days to win the SEC Tournament in Greenville, S.C. “Molly has been ‘the one,’” South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley said. “Molly and [athletic trainer] Craig [Oates] both have. With the athletes, and athletes of this caliber, they need a sense of confidence. If they’ve got a bump or bruise somewhere, they need to know psychologically that they’re OK. Part of a strength coach and a trainer is to treat it and then treat their minds. “We’ve got the best of them.”
22 WOMEN'S BASKETBALL • MOLLY BINETTI
Binetti’s guidance was a major reason why South Carolina’s quintet of Ty Harris, Zia Cooke, Brea Beal, Mikiah Herbert Harrigan and Aliyah Boston started all 33 games. It was the first time in Staley’s 12 seasons with the Gamecocks that the same unit started every game. “Molly is an important factor,” Boston said. “She has been throughout the entire season.” Above everything else, Binetti — who was hired by the program in June 2018 — tailors workouts to each specific player based on the player’s needs. As Binetti says, all players have different body types and personalities and respond differently physically and emotionally to different regimens. It’s about getting each player’s body to “feel the best” and “as strong and as powerful as possible.” Binetti keys in on what reduces a player’s chance of injury and then looks to continue to train what they are good at to make that better. She trains players for what she calls the “worst-case scenario.” “To get them prepared not just for the demands of one game, but the reality of playing three games back to back to back, potentially going into double-overtime, I want our team to be physically capable,” she said. Binetti wrote in a blog post earlier this season: "The best teams have their best players ready and available on game day. [The postseason] is also the time of year athletes should be their strongest and most powerful, which makes balancing the training with the demands of the season a tall task.” “I take it very seriously upon myself to make sure I’m doing everything possible to put them in the best position to shine,” she said. “And that’s just dialing in, everything from our training to recovery, our nutrition, our hydration, what type of recovery garments we’re wearing, what we’re doing in the hotel, what we’re doing between games. “Making sure we’re not leaving anything up to chance.” Binetti uses a team approach with Oates and a team dietician to get things done. The Gamecocks boarded its bus to Greenville with hydration packets, Gatorade and Gatorade chews, the latter which she gives players about 20 minutes before each game. She also brought recovery shakes that players drink about 30 minutes after each game. For afternoon games she makes sure they wake up at about 7 a.m. for the team’s 8 a.m. breakfast. For night games she makes sure players drink and eat afterward and use a cold tub if needed. She routinely checks the data from the team’s Polar Team Pro — which they wear during games and practices — to track heart rate. “We want to make sure we’re doing everything for them that mentally makes them feel
APRIL 2020
