Championship loss stings. Season still a success for Dawn Staley, Gamecocks
Dawn Staley has established a standard of excellence in her 17 seasons as head women’s basketball coach at South Carolina.
Staley has taken the program to unprecedented levels of success in the last five years alone: five trips to the Final Four, three national title game appearances and two championship wins.
South Carolina had another shot to add to its trophy case on Sunday but came up short, but that doesn’t mean this season wasn’t a success.
It doesn’t help that the Gamecocks (35-4) in their pursuit of a championship repeat ran into the standard of excellence in women’s basketball: Geno Auriemma and Connecticut.
UConn won its first national title since 2016 after shellacking South Carolina 82-59 Sunday at Amalie Arena in Tampa. That tied for the third-largest point margin in NCAA Tournament championship game history.
“UConn has been the standard,” Staley said Sunday.
South Carolina has had UConn’s number in recent years, including a win in the 2022 national championship game, but this year the series was all Huskies. UConn beat South Carolina in Columbia by 29 points in February before the 23-point win on Sunday.
“They know when they kick your butt and you know when you kick their butt,” Staley said. “I think they had the better team this year. It’s not that you always win when you have the better team. But they had the better team this year and they won. And that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
UConn didn’t win this year’s national title because of its history, though.
If anything, it felt like the stars aligned for the Huskies and South Carolina was the only thing standing between this season’s team of destiny and a national title.
UConn was able to return bonafide stars in All-American Paige Bueckers and All-Big East player Azzi Fudd in addition to having national freshman of the year Sarah Strong.
The No. 2 seeded Huskies breezed through the NCAA Tournament, beating their first three opponents by an average of 42 points, before facing their toughest challenge: No. 1 seed Southern Cal. The Trojans were without Naismith Player of the Year Juju Watkins (in a way, further proof of the stars aligning) and UConn was able to win by 14 to punch its ticket to the Final Four.
Things were rolling for UConn. South Carolina stopping the Huskies simply wasn’t in the cards.
“Everything was going right for them,” USC’s Maddy McDaniel said. “It wasn’t really much that we could do on our end to kind of disrupt their flow or change what things are going on.”
A successful season for Gamecocks
Just because South Carolina lost in the national championship game doesn’t mean the season was a disappointment.
USC came into the season off a 38-0 campaign capped by a 2024 national championship. The Gamecocks returned 87.1% of minutes played and 83.9% of scoring from that title-winning roster.
The expectation was to play for another national championship — and they did just that.
“Coach said it right away at the first practice: The standards are high,” USC’s Maryam Dauda said.
Sure, there were few times this season where it looked like a championship game appearance might not be in the cards for South Carolina.
Maybe it was before the season even started when South Carolina lost Kamilla Cardoso, their 6-foot-7 All-American, to the WNBA.
Maybe it was when South Carolina lost big on the road to UCLA in the sixth game of the season.
Maybe it was when South Carolina lost an All-SEC talent in Ashlyn Watkins, the heir apparent to Cardoso in the paint, for the season to an ACL injury.
Maybe it was when South Carolina lost its 71-game home win streak and 57-game SEC regular-season win streak within a week of each other.
After all that, the Gamecocks still played enough winning basketball to make it to the national title game, where they just ran out of gas.
“Everybody was just like, there’s no way we’re gonna make it back there,” Dauda said. “But we made it back here, and we were right there, but we just couldn’t finish it out.”
South Carolina’s women’s basketball program has a lot to build on and its fan base has plenty of reasons for optimism.
The Gamecocks have made five-consecutive Final Four appearances and will have a roster dotted with young talent who will tout championship experience next season.
Mix that with a promising recruiting class, a potential return from veteran Raven Johnson and additions from the transfer portal, and the program remains set up for even more success — perhaps as soon as next year.
“This is not the end for this team at all, for this program,” Bree Hall said. “They will be back here — next year. I’m saying it, next year. Whenever it is, I believe in them. And I know that Coach (Staley) has something great up her sleeve. And it’s just going to keep being a great program, honestly.”
This story was originally published April 7, 2025 at 7:10 AM.
