Dawn Staley expresses frustration with ‘undisciplined’ showing vs. Mississippi State
South Carolina secured yet another double-digit victory over an opponent Sunday — its 12th in 14 tries. But no one in the Gamecocks locker room left satisfied.
“What I said, probably, you’d need to turn your camera off to really get the full gist of it,” coach Dawn Staley joked when asked about her message to the team after its 85-66 win over Mississippi State at Colonial Life Arena.
“It wasn’t our normal postgame talk,” she said. “It was a little bit deeper.”
The Bulldogs led the Gamecocks 19-16 late in the first quarter of their SEC home opener. Midway through the third quarter, USC led by 10 — as tight of a score South Carolina has experienced all season at home — until junior guard Bree Hall sank two timely 3-pointers.
South Carolina missed 20 layups (14-of-34) and managed to snag just 16 offensive rebounds. MSU nearly bested them on the glass, with the Bulldogs grabbing 43 boards to the Gamecocks’ 44 — atypical from a USC team out-rebounds its opponents by 16 on average.
In short, as Staley said: “We did enough to win a basketball game but probably not enough to win this league.
“I think we just played undisciplined, uncharacteristically, on both sides of the basketball. So that’s disheartening because we’ve worked really hard to have those instances not appear as much as in the game, or we’re able to cover it up a little bit better.”
Hall, a leader on this year’s squad, shared the same kind of disappointment in the team’s performance.
“We did not meet the standards today, and will meet them the next game,” Hall said. “Immediately.”
Still, South Carolina remains the No. 1 team in the country in the AP Top 25 that was released Monday. It’s a young squad that Staley has no doubt will find a way back to the refined level of basketball its used to playing. How quickly the Gamecocks will get there, though, is the real question.
In just under two weeks, USC must travel to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to take on defending national champion LSU. After a tumultuous first few weeks to the season, the Tigers seem to have figured themselves out. The Gamecocks, who struggled to play disciplined in hostile environments like North Carolina and Duke, will have to be at their best to overcome the No. 7 Tigers on their turf (where they’re averaging about 10,830 fans per game).
Staley has faith in her team’s ability to respond to her more stern postgame message.
The Gamecocks have demonstrated their ability to do so before. Take their turnover problem that’s seemed to largely clean itself up over the last few weeks (with an exception here and there). Or their foul shots debacle, on full display against ECU (where they shot 52.9% from the free throw line), but now a virtual nonissue (see free throw percentages of 86.7% and 75% against Florida and MSU, respectively).
Their talent is undeniable, but they still have much to learn.
“It’s just getting young people to recognize certain things,” Staley said Sunday. “And sometimes you do it different ways. You do it in this tone, where it’s just conversational, and then you do it in a more demanding tone. It was more of a demanding tone. Because I don’t really think they know. They’re so young.”
