SAN ANTONIO – The phrase is actually a wrong quote. Leo Durocher never said, “The cool guys finish last”, at least not when it was first assigned to him.
What the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers manager really said about his rival New York Giants was how cool all the players looked compared to his rude, rude, win-win Dodgers, a mindset created and endorsed by Durocher. Before a game in 1946, he pointed to the Giants in a crowd of sports journalists, saying, “The cool guys are all there, in seventh place,” seventh being one of the last in the National League.
The popular motto was repeated ad nauseam in music, cinema and especially in sports, where it can be found on the walls of changing rooms across the country. Dawn Staley didn’t have to move much when she told the South Carolina women’s basketball team.
“Our team is really cool and we need to figure out how to continue with this kind of nasty and get energized, because I had to say to them during the time, ‘A good team is not going to win a national championship, nor a SEC tournament championship’ ”Said Staley after a victory at the opening of the SEC tournament over Alabama weeks ago. “We need to find some sand.
Through her first two games at the NCAA Tournament, a whip of 79-53 at Mercer and a 59-42 defeat in Oregon, she saw something like this. Not enough to call it a trend, but enough to make Staley feel a lot better than what she saw this season.
Nothing against Gamecocks. Staley loves his team, he loves her and is extremely talented.
But where was the evil? The dog? The kind of approach that lets the opponent know that not only will Gamecocks beat them, but they will also rub their opponent’s nose on it?
“In the Alabama game, coach, she told us that good teams cannot win championships. They can’t even win the SEC championships, ”said Boston. “I think that kind of triggered it a little bit. We know that the teams will be physical. We know that they will come after us, but we just have to stand and be ready for it. “
That’s why there was an almost complete blockage of a good Oregon 3-point shooting team. That’s why there was an abundance of games of chance, with Gamecocks posting more burns to the ground than rebounds, although there were many of each.
Was it Larry Bird telling the Lakers what move he was going to play in the 1987 NBA finals, and then hitting the shot after doing exactly what he said? No, but there are traces of what Staley wants to see.
“You just don’t get rid of kindness on a weekend. Evil is a way of life, really; good, unpleasant, that balance of doing it that way, ”said Staley. “I am very happy to see that it is there. Like, it’s in our players ”.
A big part of last year’s success was the team’s chemistry. Everyone genuinely liked each other and were committed to a fantastic season.
However, there is a lot of chemistry. They had players who could piss them off or calm them down last year.
After Ty Harris and Mikiah Herbert Harrigan left, they were left with a strong, disciplined, experienced and cool team.
This is great to have, except for the last part. As USC prepares to play Georgia Tech on March 28 for a spot on Elite Eight, Staley hopes it will be over forever.
She was also not mistakenly referred to as Durocher.
“As coaches, we have to take that away from them, or else they will be comfortable in their skins,” said Staley. “That’s not how the world works, because most of the time, nice people end up, maybe not last, but certainly not first.”
South Carolina faces Georgia Tech on March 28 in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA women’s tournament.
Follow David Cloninger on Twitter @DCPandC.