‘Something that our team needed’: USC is set to rebound from its first loss, Dawn Staley says

Fresh off its first loss of the season to one of the best teams in the country, South Carolina women’s basketball is now preparing for a dramatic shift in pace.

This past Sunday, then-No. 6 Notre Dame attacked the No. 5 Gamecocks (6-1) in Estero, Florida, at the Gulf Coast Showcase with elite guard play and swarming defense to win, 92-85. On Thursday, USC will return home to face a Western Carolina squad that has just one win and is far behind the Gamecocks by practically every statistical measure.

But when South Carolina faces the Catamounts (1-4), coach Dawn Staley wants to see her team apply the lessons it learned from playing the now third-ranked Irish.

“You don’t like losing, but obviously, the more this team sees and experiences, the better,” Staley said. “Sometimes that’s going to take us dropping a game here and there just to understand what we need to do to tighten up the ship and get better.

“The ... second and third effort has to happen in order for us to be effective, especially against teams like (Notre Dame). But it was a good learning lesson for us. Our practices have been pretty good, where we’re just trying to get a lot more discipline and give a lot more effort than we gave.”

Specifically, Staley faulted her team’s transition defense, saying her players mostly failed to get back after turnovers to limit easy buckets, and even when they did, allowed Notre Dame to collect rebounds for second-chance points. All told, the Irish collected 20 points off Gamecock turnovers and had 19 second-chance points, both season highs for South Carolina opponents.

The team’s defense is something Staley has previously mentioned as an area of concern, and before Western Carolina, she said a significant factor in USC’s struggles has been personnel turnover.

“Obviously when you look at who we put on the floor, they’ve played different roles for us. You know, they haven’t been starters, now they’re starters, and now they have to play during crunch time. So they have to learn. And that just doesn’t happen. They have to learn those responsibilities at the end of basketball games and make plays,” Staley said.

As November ends and the start of conference play begins to loom on the horizon, Staley said losses like the Notre Dame game actually help move that process along.

“This is something that our team needed, obviously, for several reasons. One, you can see where you’re weak in some areas. Two, you want to see how our kids respond after being in an adverse situation. Three, it helps you practice a little bit better. It helps you kinda get their attention to be a little more disciplined in areas in which as players, they often don’t see what coaches see until you drop a game,” Staley said.

In contrast, however, Thursday’s game against Western Carolina is expected to be an easy win for Staley’s squad: the Catamounts rank outside the NCAA’s top 160 in scoring offense, scoring defense, rebounding margin, turnover margin and assist-turnover ratio, and their only victory this season came against winless UNC Asheville.

Staley said senior guard Bianca Cuevas-Moore will “probably” not play Thursday. Cuevas-Moore has missed every regular season game so far with a sprained knee, and her absence was particularly notable against Notre Dame as starting point guard Tyasha Harris spent time on the bench with foul trouble. But South Carolina faces No. 14 Duke on Sunday, and Staley is likely hoping she can return by then.

“We’ll see toward the end of the week how she feels,” Staley said of Cuevas-Moore, who has been shooting during practices but has not resumed running.

This story was originally published November 29, 2017 at 5:26 PM with the headline "‘Something that our team needed’: USC is set to rebound from its first loss, Dawn Staley says."