Chloe Kitts does not like music. Not even a specific genre — just music. All of it. OK, save for Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA,” to which she knows all the words. Aside from that, whatever her happy place is, it does not include tunes.

Yes, sometimes she wears headphones. They just aren’t connected to anything. If you lifted the headphones off her ears, 99% of the time you’d hear silence.

“I just put my earphones on because everyone else does,” Kitts told The State. “(Music) doesn’t really make me relax.”

That is a problem. Not disliking music — though that’s, um, unique. People need healthy vices, whatever tranquil activities can help declutter the mind. For many it’s music. For others, it’s exercise or reading or meditation or a bit of all that.

Last Thursday, just a day before South Carolina took on Tennessee Tech in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament, Kitts bent down at her locker, unzipped her white backpack and pulled out her relaxing pleasure.

It’s a coloring book — 52 pages, single-sided, with hand-drawn pictures of everything from an ice cream truck to a cow getting abducted by a UFO to a house made of a strawberry.

Titled “Stress Relief: Bold-easy coloring book,” it is available on Amazon for $7.99 and it has become integral to Kitts’ pregame routine. Before games, she sits at her locker for a couple minutes, markers at the ready, totally in the zone.

“You can talk to her one second,” said guard Te-Hina Paopao, “and the next thing you know, she’s coloring and like blocking everybody out.”

“It’s just one of the strategies I use to help me relax before games,” Kitts told The State. “I don’t do it (before) every game … and, if not, I use my iPad and there’s a coloring book app.”

Sometimes if tip-off is approaching and Kitts doesn’t have her markers out, guard Tessa Johnson will prod her teammate — “Do your coloring book,” she’ll tell Kitts.

Of course she does. To know what Kitts looks like at her peak is to do anything to help her get to that spot. At times this season — as evidenced by her SEC Tournament MVP award — she’s been South Carolina’s best player.

She has nearly 100 more rebounds than any other Gamecock while scoring in double digits. Against Ole Miss in February, she became the first USC player since Aliyah Boston in 2021 to record a triple-double. Since then, she’s scored at least 10 points in every game, including a career-high 25 against Vanderbilt.

“This is the Chloe we projected when we started recruiting her,” coach Dawn Staley said of Kitts — a former five-star prospect — in mid-March.

Until asked about it, Staley had no idea that Kitts’ pregame ritual included a coloring book, but quickly quipped that Kitts was channeling her “inner AJ Brown.”

Brown, the wide receiver for Staley’s beloved Philadelphia Eagles, was spotted on the sidelines this season reading a book mid-game. His reasoning: “I use it to refocus and lock in despite what may transpire in the game, good or bad,” Brown told reporters.

In a way, that’s Kitts’ goal with the coloring book: Reel in all of her pregame anxiety.

The idea, as many good ones do, came to her through therapy.

“It’s not bad to go see a therapist,” Kitts told Olivia Thompson on “The Coop” podcast. “You just go tell them how you feel … and they give you things to do to make you feel better.”

Kitts said she was explaining to her therapist that her pregame nerves were past what one would think of as normal butterflies. Her hands would sweat. She’d get so amped up, she’d feel like she couldn’t breathe.

“(My therapist) just tells me to color in a coloring book,” Kitts said. “If you don’t fill your mind with other stuff, if you get in too deep with basketball, then it’s just depressing. It’s sad.”

The coloring book serves as a temporary escape.

Of the many who have noticed the effects the ritual has had on Kitts is Maryam Dauda, a junior forward just like Kitts. She remembers the first exhibition of the season at Memphis. Kitts looked nervous — OK, they were both nervous.

That day began a tradition. Now, before they finish pregame warmups and head into the locker room, they find each other and ask each other two questions: Are you good? Are you nervous?

And then the pair will go to the locker room. Dauda will begin her routine and Kitts will do the same, reaching into her backpack to grab a coloring book.

This story was originally published March 25, 2025 at 8:00 AM.