Dawn Staley praises devoted Gamecock fans ahead of Final Four
Dawn Staley knows it takes one second to take a picture.
The head coach of No. 1 South Carolina women’s basketball took extra time after the Gamecocks’ Elite Eight win over Creighton in the Greensboro Regional to snap photos with fans — affectionately called “FAMs” — giving them memories to take back to Columbia.
“It’s people,” Staley said after the game. “One of our fans told me his grandmother told him, ‘When you treat people good, they treat you better.’ And that’s what the fans have done in Columbia, South Carolina in supporting us.”
South Carolina, the No. 1 overall seed in this year’s NCAA tournament, made it to Minneapolis for the 2022 Final Four. It’s good news for the number of fans who told Staley they had already bought their plane tickets during the regular season.
“We build our fan base on their willingness to budget,” Staley said Thursday. “They budget for season tickets. They budget to go to NCAA tournaments, regional sites. They budgeted to come to Minnesota before we were even a part of being in the Final Four, and they put a lot of pressure on us to make sure that we got here.”
South Carolina was allotted 528 ticket booklets for the Final Four at Target Center. All of the Gamecocks’ ticket booklets were sold, a school spokeswoman said.
The Gamecocks’ women’s basketball program has led the nation in attendance for seven straight years, discounting for the 2020-21 COVID-19 restricted season. South Carolina averaged 12,268 fans at Colonial Life Arena through the 2021-22 season.
“They’ve been with us, not just this year,” Staley said. “They’ve been with us when we weren’t a popular team, or we weren’t a whole lot to cheer about. This is my 14th year being at South Carolina, but probably the last 10, our fans have given us a ride that’s kind of irreplaceable (and) given our student-athletes an experience like no other by filling our arena and traveling well with us.”
What’s the secret to creating that famed South Carolina women’s basketball fan base? Building relationships, Staley says, by creating opportunities to get to know coaches and players as people. Staley also believes “word of mouth” has helped the Gamecocks’ program grow, with fans spreading the word to their friends.
Now, Staley looks up in the stands after games with pride for what she’s built at South Carolina.
“It looks like no other sporting event on our campus,” Staley said. “That’s a mixture of all kinds of races and ethnicities, and I know a lot of friendships have been forged because of the environment we create within our arena.”
NCAA WBB Final Four tickets
There are still tickets available on the resale market for Friday’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament Final Four games (USC-Louisville, 7 p.m.; Stanford-UConn, 9:30 p.m.).
As of Thursday afternoon, around 125 tickets were on sale for Friday’s games via the NCAA’s ticket partner AXS. Those tickets ranged from $75 in the Target Center’s upper bowl. Seats in the lower bowl were going for a few hundred dollars each, though one seller was asking $2,500 each for two tickets in Row 21 of the middle section. The “get-in” price on ticket reseller StubHub was $93. The most expensive seat for Friday’s game via StubHub was $1,182 — one row closer in that same section as the AXS seller asking $2,500 per seat.
The most expensive ticket to Sunday’s national champion game through AXS, as of Thursday, was $400. The average get-in price was closer to $90 to $100 each in the upper bowl.
