Final miss may stick with Aliyah Boston. But it won’t define her, Dawn Staley says
Dawn Staley knows. She knows there’s nothing she can say to Aliyah Boston right now that will get her to move on from the final moments of Friday’s 66-65 Final Four loss.
Those last seconds will stick with Boston for a long, long time — the steal off the inbounds pass with South Carolina down one to Stanford and less than 15 seconds to play. The pass to teammate Brea Beal. Beal’s shot attempt caroming off the rim and right into the hands of Boston, a 6-foot-5 All-American. Boston rising up and releasing her putback attempt just in the nick of time, with 0.1 seconds on the clock, seemingly about to send the Gamecocks to the national championship game. And the ball hitting the rim and bouncing out.
The agony of that moment, that left Boston in tears — absolutely crushed — doesn’t go away overnight, or even in a week or two.
“We’ll talk to her and try to get her to move off of it,” Staley said. “She won’t because she’s just wired like that.”
How does Staley know with such certainty? She’s lived it herself.
In 1992, Staley was in the Final Four. Then a senior point guard for Virginia, she had made the previous two Final Fours but had never won the whole thing. Facing the same Stanford team, coached by the same Tara VanDerveer, Staley gave everything she had. She scored 19 points, she pulled down nine rebounds. But with less than second left on the clock and her team down 66-65, she got the inbounds pass and missed the final shot, ending her college career.
On Friday, almost exactly 29 years later, Staley could still recall every detail of that last attempt.
“The officials called the game off. I thought there was more time. They ran in the tunnel. I ran after them, said, ‘C’mon back, you got to look and see, there’s more time left on the clock.’ They put more time on the clock. We played that 0.8 seconds. We’re down by one, I believe. In that instance, they put a fresh body on me, someone that didn’t play the entire game. She came out. Angela Taylor, she was just fresh,” Staley said.
“I’m thinking, ‘OK, well, I broke away from her and just heaved up a shot.’ I thought about it. I’m like, I could have gotten her to foul me. She’s so fresh and gung-ho about denying me the basketball, I should have started my breakout and stopped. She would have just actually ran me over. I could have just kind of lied down and faked a foul and went to the free-throw line.”
So Staley knows what she means when she says that one doesn’t just move on from moments like Friday, especially when the player at the center of it is Aliyah Boston. Earlier this season, Staley recalled encountering Boston in tears after a game because she felt she didn’t play well enough. She herself has admitted she takes losses and mistakes hard.
“Aliyah is wired that way for a reason. She’s a perfectionist,” Staley said. “She is one that really studies the game and thinks about the game. She holds herself to a higher standard. That’s not part of her standard. So that’s why it hurt so much, because it’s something that she practices all the time.”
Making it sting all the more is the fact that Boston had been in a nearly identical position earlier this season. At the end of regulation against UConn, she had two offensive rebounds and two chances right at the basket to send South Carolina to a massive win. She missed both attempts, the game went to overtime, and the Gamecocks lost.
On Friday, Staley saw her star player get the rebound and thought, in the milliseconds before the shot, that perhaps this would be a full circle moment.
“I thought just about the UConn game. I thought it was going to be redemption for Aliyah, just for that ball to drop in for her,” Staley said. “But it wasn’t in the cards for us.”
The miss may haunt Boston, but it won’t erase yet another solid game in an All-American season for her. She tallied 11 points, 16 rebounds and four blocks Friday, overcoming foul trouble in the process.
“One or two moments like that don’t define who she is as a player,” Staley said. “So I hope that she’ll get over it. She won’t for a long time.”
Even if it stays with her, though, there will be other moments, better moments in the future. Staley also knows that from experience.
“From 29 years ago to now, I mean, there are so many great memories that replace that,” Staley said of her 1992 miss. “It only comes up when I’m asked.”
For now, there will be tears. Boston wasn’t made available to speak with the media after Friday’s game, but her misery was clear for all to see, even as teammates and opponents comforted her.
Moving forward, though, Staley has no doubt she will overcome the pain.
“Aliyah will get over it. Aliyah is a great player. Aliyah will come back stronger, better,” Staley said. “If she’s ever put in this position again, she’ll knock it down.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
