TAMPA — Dawn Staley has spoken often of the evolutions she has gone through in 17 years coaching the South Carolina women’s basketball team. She has loosened over time as the age gap between her and her players expands year over year, filed down her rough edges some to better handle ever-shortening attention spans and to flow along with the constant changes in college athletics.
But sometimes coaching requires nothing more than the basics. Staley’s Gamecocks advanced to their fifth consecutive Final Four this week as it seemed the walls were closing in on them, so she spent the days leading up to their 74-57 win in Friday’s national semifinal against fellow No. 1 seed Texas listening to her players, catering to their needs. Their first four NCAA tournament victories had been getting tighter — wins by 60, 11, four and four, with the past two being against the lowest No. 4 seed, Maryland, and No. 2 seed Duke. Staley spent the past few days with a “the doctor is in” sign hung outside her office.
“I mean, there’s that talk where you just got to work your way through it. What are you thinking about? It’s all those questions you ask them just to get them to go a little bit deeper because you’re holding on to it,” Staley said. “And you’re like, I want to perform so well that it works against you. So you get them to talk and release everything that’s holding them down. And it frees them up.”
South Carolina looked like its old self again Friday, and all it took was a few therapy sessions with Staley and an opponent the Gamecocks had beaten twice already in three previous meetings this season. They advanced to their fourth national title game and their third in four seasons and will face No. 2 seed Connecticut, which blew out No. 1 seed UCLA, 85-51, in the late game Friday at Amalie Arena. Confidence shouldn’t be hard to come by Sunday afternoon — they have never lost an NCAA championship game.
Not that Staley brings up their record at this stage. She prefers releasing the past, not resting on prior achievements. That’s how she got a vintage performance out of her Gamecocks, whose strength is their depth. They had three scorers in double figures Friday, perhaps none more impactful than standout freshman Joyce Edwards, who helped bolster the most productive bench in the country throughout the regular season but tallied just 15 points across South Carolina’s previous three games.
Edwards bounced back Friday with 13 points, 11 rebounds and six assists to supplement leading scorer and starting point guard Te-Hina Paopao’s 14 points. Starter Bree Hall added 11 points, South Carolina got nine more points off the bench from Tessa Johnson, and Texas found itself unable to find its footing as wave after wave of scorers rolled in.
“I mean, they could start, both of them. Joyce can start for any program,” Staley said when asked about the luxury of her roster’s depth. “They chose to come to us because, one, you’re going to learn how to play, like really going to learn how to play. Two, you’re going to play a competitive schedule. Three, you’re going to play in front of the best fans in the country at an almost capacity clip.”
Depth, experience, composure, crisper execution — South Carolina had it all against Texas, and that composure especially made all the difference as the Longhorns opened up a 12-4 lead in part because South Carolina was just, well, off. The Gamecocks started the game shooting 1 for 6 from the field and letting Texas point guard Rori Harmon and SEC player of the year Madison Booker get comfortable.
“We’ve been in those situations before, slow starts. We knew how to bounce back,” Edwards said. “… It wasn’t a pressure to do anything out of the ordinary. We just knew we just had to keep going.”
The Gamecocks settled in eventually and chipped away at Texas’s lead. The Longhorns had just a 19-18 edge at the start of the second quarter and faced trouble on the horizon — Booker had picked up two fouls.
“Every time she got a foul, we would throw up a number,” Paopao said. “This is how many fouls she’s got.”
Those fouls were devastating for the Longhorns. They weren’t expected to topple the reigning champs, both because of recent history (the SEC tournament title game against South Carolina, in which they went cold in the second quarter and lost by 19) and their major flaw (they avoid shooting three-pointers much the way vampires avoid the sun).
Booker played just three minutes of the second quarter, which left a Texas team whose offense can stagnate without its best scorer. South Carolina settled in for good as the shots started falling, churning out a 12-2 run across the second and third quarters.
South Carolina led 43-35 then, and it increased the pressure for a third quarter that all but sealed the game. The Gamecocks shot 56.3 percent in the period and appeared under the basket for clutch rebound after clutch rebound, outpacing Texas on the boards 13-5.
Booker did not score after the 7:10 mark in the third quarter and finished the game with 11 points. Jordan Lee led Texas with 16 off the bench as the Longhorns exited their first appearance in the Final Four since 2003, surrendering to a rare group: defending champions, unburdened by their past and looking only to the future.
