Gamecocks trying to emulate top dogs

Dawn Staley wants South Carolina to be like Connecticut. It starts by taking the next step.

“It’s not just you get talent and you win. They have to be committed to it,” Staley said before the No. 2 Gamecocks’ spotlight game on Monday. “The people that we have here have been committed to it and that’s why you’ve seen it grow so fast.”

Top-ranked UConn visits in a game that will have the nation tuned in. The only two unbeaten teams in the country, the top two teams in the polls and the latest program to challenge the Huskies’ superiority makes it must-see TV. It’s outstanding for women’s college basketball as a whole and a huge game for USC. The result won’t deter the Gamecocks’ quest for a third straight SEC championship and everything else it wants to do this season, it will be a measuring stick, just like it was last year.

Staley wants to see how her team plays against the best in the country. She wants to see how close she is to bringing a national championship to Columbia.

Staley isn’t comparing her program to UConn, winners of 10 titles and THE team in the sport. But Staley knows that UConn was once in USC’s place, and the journey to where it is now began with that first championship.

Just over 20 years ago, UConn completed a perfect season with its first national title. It was the product of an up-and-coming coach who struggled for a spell, then began churning out strong teams. He won the battle for highly-ranked local recruits and in 1994-95, UConn ran the table in a season that gave women’s college basketball national credibility.

Staley was part of the growth. As a junior at Virginia, she and her teammates played a surprising UConn team in the 1991 Final Four. The Cavaliers beat the Huskies, but Staley could see there was something about the young firebrand coach and the program he had constructed.

She had no idea that any team could become such a juggernaut.

“You don’t see a program like that just win the next 12 out of 15 national championships,” Staley said. “It’s coaching, it’s playing, it’s atmosphere, it’s commitment, it’s all of those things that embody success.”

UConn rebounded from the loss in 1991 by signing Rebecca Lobo, a top recruit from a Massachusetts town an hour from Storrs. She could have gone anywhere, but something about Geno Auriemma and what he had already done lured her to UConn.

“I saw a program that was building and a young coach that was starting to make his mark before I got there,” Lobo said. “The year we went to the Final Four, the first championship in 1995, there were quite a few kids that were local.”

She sees the similarities at USC. Staley scrapped to her first NCAA Tournament appearance with a toughened group of seniors, mostly recruited from the Northeast. But the recruiting cycle swung south after that year, and Staley cleaned up with local stars Alaina Coates, Khadijah Sessions and Tiffany Mitchell. That became the fight to obtain the signature of a player like Lobo and Staley got it with top recruit A’ja Wilson.

UConn, in 1994-95, and USC’s rise over the past five years each brought more fans as wins piled up. Since the 1995 title, the Huskies have at least been to the Elite Eight every year but two. Staley took the Gamecocks to their first NCAA Final Four last year and is hoping the same kind of run is in store for USC.

Now an analyst, Lobo’s impressed with USC’s talent and compares it to what UConn has faced since 1995. Once it got its first title, it became the hunted and other teams began to build rivalries.

“From the outside, all of us perceive South Carolina as the next biggest challenger to Connecticut,” she said. “Notre Dame has kind of been there the last four or five years, now South Carolina is. The Tennessee rivalries, the Notre Dame rivalries became what they were and Notre Dame became what it still is because there was a lot at stake when they played.”

If the Gamecocks can top the Huskies, especially in late March/early April, that’s how rivalries are built and dynasties constructed.

Or toppled.

“It’s always been a dream to play UConn, but now that we’ve kind of built this program up, it’s a big game for us, of course, and for the school,” Mitchell said. “We’re just going to try to do our best to take them down.”

This story was originally published February 6, 2016 at 5:53 PM with the headline "Gamecocks trying to emulate top dogs."