The hidden moments that reveal Aliyah Boston’s greatness

HANDS, FINGERS, ELBOWS and hips jab at Aliyah Boston as she catches the ball on the baseline inside South Carolina’s Colonial Life Arena. Surrounded by three LSU players, Boston pinballs against them as she tries to find something resembling breathing room, let alone a path to the rim. It’s a tangle of limbs with a frenetic edge, a desperation to get the ball away from the reigning national player of the year. She spins to her left, shoots with her right, makes the bucket and heads to the free throw line.

It is a familiar scene during Boston’s last season at South Carolina: She draws a crowd, both in the stands and in the paint. And she does so without being flashy. She doesn’t lick her fingers like LSU’s Angel Reese, doesn’t chuck it from the logo like Iowa’s Caitlin Clark. Sure, she sports her brightly colored and ever-changing braids, but that is the extent of the attention she draws for anything other than her talent and production.

She doesn’t celebrate big plays ostentatiously, if at all. After a fourth-quarter block against LSU that was so hard it left Alexis Morris on the ground, Boston doesn’t smile or indulge in even a moment of schadenfreude. Instead, she helps Morris up, receives a pat on the back from her and goes right back to the huddle.

Boston isn’t the biggest, the fastest, nor the loudest. But it’s clear that every opponent has a singular defensive mission: Stop her.

Collectively, her talent and humility are proof that greatness doesn’t take a singular form — that Boston has earned a place in the canon of college…