It was a long season but South Carolina’s women’s head basketball coach Dawn Staley made history after capturing her third National Championship as coach of the Gamecocks.
A lot didn’t think they would get to a Final Four let alone the National Championship game before the season started. In fact, they were ranked 6th in the preseason polls and Staley felt that was too high for them. To be fair though, they lost all five starters from a team that lost in the Final Four to Iowa so them not being number one was warranted.
“Although we haven’t been the most talked-about team in this whole women’s basketball year,” Staley acknowledged in an interview with CNN on Monday, “we’ll be talked about a lot in the off-season.
“I’d much rather have it that way after having won another national championship.”
They proved a lot of doubters wrong throughout the season though.
“Perfection wears garnet and black.”
Welcome home, @GamecockWBB. pic.twitter.com/MeRpFK9mOI
— University of South Carolina (@UofSC) April 9, 2024
In a year with a lot of true superstars in Women’s College basketball, South Carolina outshined them all. With names like Caitlin Clark, Juju Watkins, Paige Bueckers, Cam Brink, and Angel Reese just to name a few, outshining them was going to be a tall task. The gamecocks were able to get it done though.
Dawn Staley and South Caroline did the improbable. Going undefeated finishing the season at 38-0 and a National Title.
“I’m just super happy for our staff,” coach Staley said.
“They work really hard. They are incredible basketball… like, I think they’re savants. I think they are always looking for ways in which to get our players better in a way that they can handle it, not in the way we see it, because the way we see it is probably…the way we would handle it would be difficult for them to actually learn and apply and execute in a basketball sense.”
Staley isn’t the first coach to go undefeated and likely won’t be the last. Even though not many have done it, that’s not where the history comes from. Dawn Staley is the first Black head coach in men’s or women’s Division 1 basketball to finish a season undefeated. To add to that, Staley is also the first Black head coach, man or woman, to win three National Championships.
Blackness isn’t something Coach Staley shies away from. It’s no secret that Black coaches often times get the short end of the stick when it comes to head coaching jobs. It’s even tougher for Black women. That’s why throughout her career, she’s tried (and succeeded) to uplift many Black coaches and has paved the way for more to come.
For women’s basketball, there have only been a handful of truly dominant programs. The teams like Tennessee and UConn. Now, with her dominance at South Carolina, Dawn Staley has created another dominant program and this won’t be the last time she creates history.