My Signature: Bianca Cuevas-Moore Blowing Up

May 25, 2018

South Carolina senior guard Bianca Cuevas-Moore sat out the 2017-18 women’s basketball season due to a knee injury. Knowing she had one more season of eligibility remaining and and would have her bachelor’s degree in-hand in May, she decided to leave Columbia to play her final season at West Virginia. And then graduation came…

My phone was blowing up.

That’s how I can best describe the last few weeks. Phone calls, texts, Twitter, Instagram. Every couple days, my phone was just going crazy.

I graduated on May 12th, and, of course I was excited. I was never really that much of a school person, so to get through college was pretty big for me. Our academic advisor, Xavier — we’ve been through some things these last four years with school. So, it started there with Xavier texting me that he was sad I was leaving but proud of me for graduating.

I think that’s when it hit Coach Staley, too — graduation. She told me she’s never been this excited for somebody to graduate. She said, ‘Bianca, I’m so proud of you.’

Two days later, I was at rehab, working with Brian on my knee, and my phone was blowing up.

I’m not on my phone during rehab, so I just thought it was my mother or Kiki and I could call them back. We finished working out, and I go look at the phone and just see a whole bunch of missed calls and texts. I see Coach Staley, Kiki, my mother. I knew it must be important.

I called Kiki first and she says, ‘Dawn wants you to come back.’

My heart dropped because this was definitely added stress. There were a trillion things going through my head.

Coach Staley always says that I’m her kryptonite because whenever we bump heads, she always has a string on her heart bringing me back. She said when she was my age, she was the same way with her coach, too.

In four years, Coach and I have had our ups and downs. Of course we did because we’re just alike — both stubborn. So, it’s hard when two stubborn people are acting the same way toward each other. That’s why we were bumping heads a lot.

I’m getting older and wiser, so I understand more. Part of it was my fault because I was hard-headed, and it took me a long time to really embrace what Coach wanted. I could always do what I wanted, didn’t have a lot of limits, so the fact that Coach Staley had a lot more discipline and structure was hard for me. Maybe half the time it wasn’t right the way she treated me, but if we had communicated better then we wouldn’t have gotten to those situations at all. So, it was hard.

I talked to the people who I tell everything to, asking them what they thought — Xavier, Kiki, my mother. They were honest with me — I’m not gonna lie, they wondered why I would come back when Coach Staley and I couldn’t always see eye to eye for four years.

But, I had thought about all those things when I decided to transfer. I had thought, maybe a different school, different scenery was what I needed, what would be better for my last year. The process of committing to West Virginia was kind of fast, but I liked it there. I liked the staff, everything about it. They had invested a lot in me already.

Then, I talked to Coach Staley, and we had a good talk.

Me and Coach Staley, we’ve been through a lot; and, like she told me, we have some unfinished business. That’s what she said she had been thinking about since graduation.

She had been speaking to somebody, and I came up. Since then she had been thinking about it, thinking about how we had come a long way and that we shouldn’t give up on each other. She wants me to have a great year. She wants me to be at the next level next year.

We talked about our relationship and what we have to do to get it right.

Coach’s big thing with me has always been communication. When I’m mad about something that happens at practice, I like to talk to my teammates about it — not go to her with it. She wants our relationship to be different. I understand her more now, what she expects from me and what I expect from her, too.

She wants me to be a leader, to try to be a captain. I can do all of that. I’ve been here this long, so I know what our system consists of — I know the plays, I know the workouts. I can teach the freshmen and the new players anything; I can lead.

And, I’m thinking long term.

Deciding to come back is about my teammates, about the relationships I’ve built overall here in Columbia. But, it’s Coach Staley, too.

I’d rather learn from her now, being more mature than I was and maturing even more in the next year. Being around her, she’s going to make sure that I’m on the right path. However my season goes, I know Coach Staley is going to make sure that my future is good.

Finally making the decision was crazy. I was nervous because I had to call West Virginia to tell them. I didn’t want to do it, but Coach Staley told me it was part of growing up — her teaching lessons had already started! — so, I did it. That was hard.

And then, Gamecock Nation heard about it.

My phone was blowing up.

It caught me off guard, wondering why my phone kept going off. When I looked on Twitter, I saw that Coach Staley and the team had released the news that I was coming back. Everything was coming through on notifications — Twitter, Instagram, texts. I couldn’t respond to everyone, but I tried to do a couple.

I always knew fans liked me being on the team, but this was different. I was, like, ‘Wow, everyone’s this excited that I’m back? These people really do love and appreciate me.’

I never felt that much happiness.

But, now it’s time to get back to work — on my knee, on my communication … on Coach Staley to let me run the plays I want to, LOL!

See you in November, Gamecock Nation!