Why Dawn Staley was determined to play No. 10 Kentucky after just one day of practice
It wasn’t the easiest win Sunday for South Carolina women’s basketball. In fact, the No. 5 Gamecocks’ 75-70 win over No. 10 Kentucky was downright scrappy, featuring the team’s biggest halftime deficit since March 2019.
Going on the road to face a highly-ranked opponent featuring one of the nation’s top players in guard Rhyne Howard, USC coach Dawn Staley wasn’t all that worried about style points.
“We’re just really elated to get a win on the road against a top 10 team in the country. And we knew it was going to be a dogfight,” Staley told reporters.
Making things even more difficult was the fact that the Gamecocks had just one day of in-person practice to prepare for the Wildcats. A positive COVID-19 test Wednesday forced the team to pause all in-person activities before three subsequent rounds of testing determined that first result to be a false positive. But by that time, it was Saturday afternoon, the day before the game.
At that point, Staley said, South Carolina had conducted virtual film sessions over video chat to get some work done. But there’s only so much you can do when not in the gym. ESPN analyst and former Georgia coach Andy Landers marveled during Sunday’s halftime break that the Gamecocks got anything done at all.
“Virtual scout — I have no idea how you do a virtual scout,” Landers said.
Staley said after the game that her staff at least talked about pushing to have the game postponed until Monday, giving the team one more day to prepare. But personally, she was strongly opposed to the idea.
“From the very beginning, if we were going to play, we were going to play today, Sunday,” Staley said. “And we just never went back to any other option, although (associate head coach Lisa) Boyer was trying to get me to at least ask the question about playing (Monday).”
Staley’s insistence on playing on schedule might seem strange given how large the matchup could loom for the SEC regular season title and conference tournament seeding. But ironically enough, her reasoning for not trying to change anything came back the overall unpredictability of this season as a whole.
“I didn’t want to delay it. I wanted to use this as an opportunity for our players to get stronger mentally, to not rely on anything besides getting the job done. Because we don’t know what this season’s gonna look like,” Staley said.
That challenge for her players didn’t wind up costing Staley a loss. But she also noted that regardless of the result, sticking to the Sunday evening tipoff time benefited South Carolina in other ways.
“You push our game back to Monday, you’re still gonna have to play three games in seven days. At least this allowed us get a little bit of rest (Monday) and have a normal SEC week,” Staley said. “So super proud of our players being able to tough this one out, and hopefully we can get some rest and get ready for Vandy on Thursday.”
NEXT USC BASKETBALL GAME
Who: No. 5 South Carolina (8-1) vs. Vanderbilt (4-2)
When: 8 p.m. Thursday
Where: Nashville, Tennessee
Watch: Streaming online on SEC Network Plus via WatchESPN
This story was originally published January 11, 2021 at 8:55 AM.
