What Dawn Staley said after South Carolina WBB’s NCAA title game loss to UCLA
South Carolina women’s basketball lost in the national championship game a second straight season after falling 79-51 to UCLA on Sunday in Phoenix.
Here’s what coach Dawn Staley had to say postgame:
On the loss overall
“I thought they came out and disrupted from a defensive standpoint. Then they pretty much got what they wanted offensively. When they did it, they created second-chance opportunities.”
“We just didn’t have it today. We tried, but we just didn’t have it today. They were the better team today. Congratulations to them.”
“Sometimes you’re part of women’s basketball history, and it’s not favorable to you. ... If you’re going to lose to a team, you want to lose to a team that just really outworked you, out-executed you, made it very difficult for you to perform at a high level. It was a direct reflection of what they (UCLA) did to us.”
On getting this far and not winning
“We got a chance to play on the last day of college women’s basketball, a season of a lot of great basketball, great talent, great coaching, great viewership. When you’re in this position, you don’t win all of ‘em. There are too many great teams out here, too many great players and coaches that decrease your chances of winning national championships.”
“The trick is to continue to get here (to the Final Four). The more you get here, the more you increase your chances of winning. So we’ve got a lot of work cut out for us. I really enjoyed the weekend. I enjoy every challenge that basketball creates. I enjoy facing them. I enjoy playing the hand that I’m dealt.”
On shooting woes from the start
“It’s really hard. I mean, I thought the first quarter, first half, we had a lot of people taking shots that aren’t normal for us. We didn’t do a good job of getting the people that probably were supposed to get some better looks the ball.”
“But I think UCLA had a lot to do with it. Not going to say that they didn’t. They really did. I didn’t think we had to play perfect basketball, but we had to play better basketball. We had to make shots, create offense for our defense.”
“We had to be better defensively, actually pushing them off their spots. I think they got to where they needed to go. We didn’t apply enough pressure for us to make an impact on the offensive side of the ball. You can have a good defensive possession, but to then give up an offensive rebound, that’s just really deflating.”
On her relationship with UCLA coach Cori Close
“I’m always happy for people that worked hard in this game, who are really quality people. I want good things to happen for them. Cori is one of those people who really works at making our game better. Not just UCLA, but our entire game.”
“Although we didn’t win, I can swallow it because we lost to a really good human being and a good team that represents women’s basketball well.”
On things not going USC’s way
“We scored how many points? 51 points, right? I think we could score about 70 on any given day. You could tell. Shots were short. I thought we didn’t really do a good job at making extra passes. The things we were doing probably worked for other teams, but other teams didn’t have a 6-foot-7 player (UCLA’s Lauren Betts).”
“You have to navigate differently. You can’t go in there thinking you can score over her or through her, so sometimes you have to go in there and draw and kick, maybe draw and kick another time. We actually wanted to do that.”
“(But) we took the first shot available. Sometimes that shot didn’t go in. A lot of times that shot didn’t go in. We weren’t creating extra possessions, offensive rebounding — things we do a lot. The things we built our success on weren’t happening for us tonight. And UCLA made us pay for it.”
On feeling pressure because the elite standard USC has created
“We feel the pressure anytime we lose a basketball game. Everyone goes crazy when we lose one basketball game. It’s hard out here. It really is hard in our sport.”
“We do feel the pressure. We’re used to winning, and we’re used to winning at a pretty high clip. How long you sustain that? We don’t know. We just try to wake up every day and just be better than we were the day before.”
“To get here is hard. To win here is harder, right? We just have to keep getting here and make adjustments when we don’t win. Obviously, we got smacked today. We got to figure out how we smack back and put ourselves in the position where we’re hoisting the trophy at the end of the day.”
On the confrontation with UConn’s Geno Auriemma being a distraction for the title game
“There weren’t any distractions that caused us to lose this basketball game. ... This is UCLA’s day, right? Let’s keep it on UCLA, them winning the national championship. Again, I will address all of that at another time, just not this weekend. We’re not going to dampen UCLA’s day with it.”
This story was originally published April 5, 2026 at 6:33 PM.
