Dawn Staley and South Carolina’s special team deserve a better ending than this
One of the all-time great SEC women’s basketball teams had its season end Thursday — by a tweet.
When history remembers South Carolina’s 2019-20 team, it will remember the 26 consecutive wins, the perfect 19-0 record in SEC play, the 13 victories over ranked opponents, the dominant 70-52 thrashing of the nation’s preeminent power, UConn.
It was arguably the best regular season in the conference in recent memory.
But it won’t remember freshmen Aliyah Boston, Brea Beal and Zia Cooke starting their first NCAA tournament games, showing maturity beyond their years in front of a charged-up crowd at Colonial Life Arena.
It won’t remember coach Dawn Staley cutting down the net in Greenville after USC advanced to the program’s third-ever Final Four.
It won’t remember seniors Tyasha Harris and Mikiah Herbert Harrigan hoisting the national championship trophy in New Orleans, a swirl of confetti all around them.
All those things seemed so possible just a few days ago, after South Carolina claimed its fifth SEC tournament title in six years and set itself up to receive a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. With the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight so close by, Staley’s team wouldn’t even have to leave the state as it advanced to the Final Four, which it seemed destined to do.
But with the uncertainty and danger surrounding the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that has been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, the NCAA had no choice. It had to cancel the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. Public health, common sense and actual lives on the line demanded it.
Still, the decision rocked the entire sports world Thursday and raised a hundred other questions that must now be sorted through and answered in the coming days and weeks. For Staley and South Carolina, the very first question is the most painful: What could have been?
Upsets happen in March all the time, of course, but it seemed more likely than not that the Gamecocks would advance to the Final Four and maybe the national championship.
The team most often mentioned as a threat to them, No. 2 Oregon, features electrifying talent in seniors Sabrina Ionescu and Ruthy Hebard, among others. Carolina’s incredibly deep, wildly skilled squad and the Ducks would very likely have put on a show, the sort of thrilling contest on the big stage that women’s basketball fans have been spoiled with over the past few seasons.
Now?
The Gamecocks ended the season ranked No. 1 in both the coaches and Associated Press polls, as well as in the RPI. The NCAA hasn’t yet said how it will award a national title, if at all. We could be looking at a situation similar to the early days of college football, when teams claimed national titles based off all sorts of polls and ranking systems.
Staley, speaking on ESPN, mentioned that Thursday.
“I know I’m going to stir up some folks. We ended our season as the No. 1 team in the country with the best record. The only team that won the regular season and ended conference season undefeated. If they are going pass out national championship trophy, we got our hands out at South Carolina,” Staley said.
And they might get it, deservedly so — opposing coaches throughout the year said this team was special, better even than the South Carolina teams that went to the Final Four in 2015 and won the national championship in 2017. Staley herself has praised the unique chemistry and bond this squad has had, saying it’s been like no other she’s had in 20 years of coaching.
But it just won’t be the same. A claimed national title would be justified by a season of sterling results, to be sure, but the thrill of March Madness is something else entirely.
To be able to stand there at the end, triumphant, having turned away all challengers, is a special thing. That moment left Gamecock star A’ja Wilson in tears when USC won it all in 2017. Now, Carolina’s seniors won’t even have the chance to experience it one last time.
All year long, fans, coaches and players knew they were watching something special when they watched this South Carolina women’s basketball team. The talent, the teamwork, the smarts were all there, almost instantaneously, and what seemed at the start to be a risky blend of inexperienced youngsters and long-time veterans clicked in a way that few teams ever do.
That special team was heading to an ending befitting its historic season. Thursday will certainly be remembered as historic — just not the way the Gamecocks and Dawn Staley deserved.
