What Dawn Staley says sets this South Carolina squad apart from her other teams
As the South Carolina women’s basketball team capped its regular season Sunday afternoon against Texas A&M, the game itself was far from beautiful. The No. 1 Gamecocks scored their fewest points in a win all year and had the benefit of a lot of help from the Aggies, who missed 13 layups as part of a dreadful shooting performance.
But after 29 other games and 11 ranked opponents, how it looked was secondary to the result, a 60-52 win. The victory gave seniors Mikiah Herbert Harrigan and Tyasha Harris a positive end to their senior day; it broke the program record for consecutive wins with 23 in a row; and it finished off a perfect 16-0 SEC season.
If it wasn’t the most dominant South Carolina has looked all year, no one minded. It was still a historic day for a team coach Dawn Staley has said is like no other she’s ever coached.
Of course, that’s not the only history Staley and USC want to write this year.
“This team welcomes challenges,” Staley said. “And now we have the challenge of winning our regular season undefeated. Now the next challenge is to win an SEC tournament, and we’ll put that in front of them on Wednesday, and we’ll just play it out.”
What exactly caused Sunday’s sloppiness wasn’t totally clear in the immediate aftermath — Staley demurred when asked if fatigue from a long season factored into it and mentioned many of her players felt pressure to give the seniors a fitting sendoff.
But the Gamecocks’ ability to overcome it all, especially as pressure mounted game by game with more and more success, impressed Staley, who admitted she would have been fine if the regular season had ended well before Sunday. With just the fourth perfect conference record since the SEC switched to a 16-game schedule in 2009-10, South Carolina’s young roster withstood challenges few teams can.
“They’re good. They are. They’re good,” Staley said of that 16-0 mark. “After playing, you know, 30 games, you are who you are, and this team is good. They’ve been challenged, and I can say that because of who we played, not because of practice, although that helps because they approach practice in a businesslike way. But we’ve been tested. We’ve been tested throughout this entire season, and they passed the test and they’re good, no doubt about it.”
Not even in the national championship season of 2016-17 was South Carolina able to run the table in the SEC. The Gamecocks last managed that feat in 2015-16, the season when they spent all year in the top 3 of the AP poll, only losing once to UConn, before getting upset in the Sweet 16 by Syracuse.
That squad was stocked with talent, just like this current one, but it had even more experience: Tiffany Mitchell, Khadijah Sessions, Alaina Coates and Asia Dozier were all upperclassmen, and A’ja Wilson was a sophomore. They crushed opponents, including a difficult SEC slate, before seeing their journey come to an end far sooner than most expected.
Older players are known quantities and typically more consistent performers. This year’s team, by contrast, is mostly underclassmen, especially freshmen. And throughout the year, Staley kept saying she was waiting to see if her inexperienced players would ever panic or crack in certain situations. Even after Sunday’s game, with the nation’s best winning percentage, she mentioned it.
“It’s a lot of pressure, especially when we’ve been having so much success. And you’re always coaching against the bad play. Like, you know it’s going to come. You just don’t know when. And I was just always coaching from, ‘When is this team gonna play really bad?’ Like, when are we really gonna have to dig ourselves out of holes?” Staley said.
As time has gone on, as the youngsters kept their composure and the seniors continued to provide steady hands, Staley said she relaxed a little. The consistency of high-level effort and play is at a different level than what she’s seen in her 20-year coaching career, and it’s been enough to give her some peace of mind in a business where coaches routinely agonize over their squads.
“We’re probably as solid of a team that I’ve ever coached. And I mean, it feels good,” Staley said. “You get the anxiety at the start of basketball games, and you’re sitting back in the locker room like, ‘Oh, what kind of team is gonna show up today?’ But ... a small part of me, or big part of me, really knows this team is going to compete, is going to make good plays, is going to make good decisions, is gonna defend if our shots are not falling. They’re going to defend, they’re going to give it up. So it feels good not second-guessing that.”
WHEN DO THE GAMECOCKS PLAY NEXT?
What: SEC Tournament
Who: No. 1 South Carolina (29-1, 16-0 SEC) vs. Winner of No. 8 seed vs. No. 9 seed
When: Noon Friday
Where: Bon Secours Wellness Arena, Greenville, South Carolina
Watch: SEC Network
Listen: 107.5 FM in Columbia area
This story was originally published March 2, 2020 at 2:20 PM.
