Dawn Staley: No. 1 Gamecocks will ‘write our own narrative’ about 2019-20 season
Since the season abruptly and unexpectedly ended about three weeks ago, South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley has had nothing but time. She’s exercised, she’s gone to Costco, she’s monitored the construction of her new house.
And she’s spent a lot of time talking, she noted in a conference call with local reporters Thursday. Without an NCAA tournament to play due to the coronavirus pandemic, her Gamecocks lost their chance to claim a national title in a tourney where they were all but certain to be the No. 1 overall seed.
In the absence of actual games, there have been numerous projections and predictions about what might have happened, and many of them pegged No. 2 Oregon, not No. 1 USC, as the tournament favorite. That publicly hasn’t sat well with Staley, who has taken to social media, done interviews and even written her own piece about her squad.
Her motivation through it all, Staley said Thursday, is to combat what she sees as a narrative built by national media that has ignored or downplayed her players and their accomplishments.
“Sometimes you have to make people pivot and talk about something, and that has to be influenced by myself, by content that our Gamecock Productions put out, then we have to do that,” Staley said. “I know moving forward, if the narrative isn’t about who deserves it on our side of things, we’re gonna write our own narrative, and we’re gonna push it out.
“And ... I don’t have an issue with our local media. I have an issue with our national media, who choose to write about a narrative and stick with it, even though it doesn’t fit all the time. There is a lot of room for great basketball stories that we missed this year, and coaches gotta speak up, coaches, definitely. If you don’t, nobody’s gonna talk about your kid. And I try to not only elevate our kids, but elevate the game because there are a lot of incredible stories that we missed all season long. And if I hear something on Twitter or I see something on Twitter, I’m gonna say something.”
The impact goes beyond pride, Staley said. She pointed to a player like senior Mikiah Herbert Harrigan, who earned All-SEC regular season honors and the SEC Tournament Most Outstanding Player award, but hasn’t been included in many WNBA mock drafts. The lack of coverage around her has hurt her future earning power, Staley argued.
So when it comes to changing that narrative herself, Staley isn’t backing off her argument that South Carolina deserves more recognition and even a national title for its 2019-20 season, even if the NCAA shows no signs of playing along.
“I heard a lot of people talk about the national championship, should we give it to anyone, and obviously the NCAA shut that down,” Staley said. “But here’s the thing; we’re programmed to play our best basketball, just in case the bottom falls out. We never thought the bottom would fall out, but it did. So the last team standing as the No. 1 team in the country, undisputed — it’s probably disputed by some people — but, our resume, what we were able to do, if you had to give out a national championship, then we played up to that, we played up to being the No. 1 team in the country.
“I did hear some people talk about, if they were the No. 1 team in the country, they would have had more national championships. Well, you got a chance to play in the NCAA tournament, but us not being able to play the NCAA tournament, when it’s all said and done, which was the end of the season, then, yes, I do think we should be national champions, because we don’t have a tournament.
“Our tournament was the preseason, the nonconference, the conference, the conference tournament, and for what we had done through that entire season, we had the best record in the country, we played the best teams in the country, we were No. 1 in RPI, we weren’t No. 1 in strength of schedule, but for who we had to go toe to toe with, and it was a pretty challenging season, and the bottom fell out, why not? A national championship trophy was made. It’s sitting somewhere.”
That national championship trophy would have been awarded this past Sunday, when the title game was scheduled to take place in New Orleans before the tournament’s cancellation. The university marked the occasion by lighting up the top of Capstone Hall, a tradition for celebrating athletic achievements.
On that occasion, Staley said her thoughts inevitably turned a little toward what could have been.
“Sunday when, you know, somebody would have been playing in the national championship game, I did think about us. And then you read on Twitter, our fans, they reenact everything, they put you in the moment of being in New Orleans and all of the things that they would have been experiencing being at the game. So that got me thinking, but at the same time you turn on the news and it’s like, people are continuing to die. So that kinda jolts you back to your reality. I do think we’ll get a chance to at least compete for a national championship in the near future, because I believe in the players.
“And I believe in them because of, not their talent, but because of their awareness, because of the togetherness that they have. Their approach is incredible. They just really have an insatiable desire to get better, compete and to win. And when you have that in young people, you know, the sky’s the limit.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 2:28 PM.
