How much did USC women’s basketball pay in non-conference games? A look at contracts
Dawn Staley isn’t a fan of “guarantee games,” defined as matchups when a larger program pays a smaller school a sum of money to play a game at the bigger school’s home court.
Staley prefers putting South Carolina women’s basketball in more competitive matchups early, in line with the philosophy that games played in November and December work to prepare the Gamecocks for March and April.
Including its one exhibition game, South Carolina scheduled eight non-conference games at Colonial Life Arena for the 2021-22 season, and just three of them involved payments to the visiting program.
According to game contracts obtained by The State through an open records request, USC paid:
▪ Benedict $5,000 for an exhibition on Nov. 1,
▪ $30,000 to Elon for a regular season matchup on Nov. 26 and
▪ $17,000 to North Carolina A&T for their regular season contest on Nov. 29.
South Carolina’s game contracts with Clemson, Kansas State, Maryland, Stanford and UConn did not involve any fixed sum payments.
“The schedule is done, but it was really hard to complete it because honestly, people don’t want to play us,” Staley said in September. “Not even like guarantee games, and I don’t really like guarantee games, I like to do home-and-homes. It’s hard. Hopefully, we can keep the schedule competitive and give our FAMs an opportunity to see us play and measure ourselves against the best in the country.”
South Carolina went 12-0 through the first part of its non-conference schedule, with a home game against UConn on Jan. 27 the last non-SEC matchups remaining in the 2021-22 slate.
The Gamecocks won their three guarantee games by a combined score of 256-121 and didn’t allow any of those three opponents to score over 42 points.
Apart from the money, which can help smaller schools financially maintain their athletic departments, head coaches from opponents South Carolina played in guarantee games this year were optimistic in postgame statements about what a matchup against the country’s top team can do for their respective seasons.
“They’re number one, so that helps you in and of itself,” Elon head coach Charlotte Smith said after South Carolina’s 79-38 win over the Phoenix. “You go back and you actually watch the film, and you pull those good things that you did and say ‘If you did this against the number one team in the country, surely you can do it against anyone else. Even though that score is lopsided, there’s a lot of good that you can pull from it to build confidence.”
North Carolina A&T head coach Tarrell Robinson, who has led the Aggies to three NCAA tournaments since 2016, said games like the South Carolina contest can help speed up the process for his own progress by matching up with elite competition.
“We’ll watch some more film, and we’ll talk about the good and the bad,” Robinson said after North Carolina A&T’s 79-42 loss to South Carolina. “In the locker room, it’s like ‘Hey, we played with potentially the national champions for 15 minutes.’ ... That’s the talk right now, and we just have to feed off of that.”
Keeping with Staley’s philosophy on crafting difficult slates, South Carolina’s strength of schedule is ranked No. 2 in the nation according to RealTimeRPI, behind only UConn. Through their first 12 games of the 2021-22 season, the Gamecocks faced six ranked opponents, including five ranked within the top 10 at the time of their game.
