Former South Carolina women’s basketball senior guard Destanni Henderson was selected by the Indiana Fever with the No. 20 pick in the WNBA draft in New York on Monday night.
"The WNBA has always been a dream of mine, but as I got older it started to feel more real, feel more realistic, and I felt like I was getting closer and closer. I'm just finally here in the moment," Henderson said. "Just thinking back, it just feels like finally, like I finally did it. All those times I spent in the gym and trying to get better, it really paid off."
Henderson joins former Gamecocks Tiffany Mitchell and Alaina Coates in Indiana.
"For us to graduate from the same school and play under the same coach, it feels really great. I'm going to be able to learn from them and really build a connection with them," Henderson said. "I feel like they have so much to tell me about, things that they experienced, and just to be a sponge and create opportunity for myself to learn as much as possible."
Henderson punctuated her Gamecock career with a 26-point performance in the 2022 national championship game, a career-high scoring effort from the senior. She was named to the Final Four most outstanding team following South Carolina’s title game triumph.
This season Henderson put up 11.5 points-per-game, which she increased to 12.8 during the NCAA tournament run, and nearly four assists per game. She was named to the USBWA third team and given honorable mentions by the AP and WBCA to earn her first All-American honors.
The guard finished her career in the top-10 in program history in both three-pointers made, eighth with 157, and total career assists, ninth with 423. Henderson’s 37.9% career three-point field goal percentage is good for fourth in program history.
Henderson joined the 1,000-point club in a win over Arkansas on Jan. 16, 2022, and her career assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.61 ranks third in the program record books.
She is the first South Carolina player to be drafted since Mikiah Herbert Harrigan and Tyasha Harris were selected sixth and seventh respectively in the 2020 WNBA draft and becomes the 13th player to be drafted into the WNBA in Gamecock women’s basketball program history.
"I just feel like I'm going to bring so much to the team," Henderson said. "Indiana Fever, I'm ready. I'm ready to get it rocking and rolling, to make history, create history and do something that has never been done before."
Editors note: Michael Sauls contributed to the reporting of this story. This story was updated with quotes from Destanni Henderson on April 11, 2022 at 10:30 p.m.