SAN ANTONIO – There is a time that Dawn Staley sees. She will talk about it if asked, but she will not talk about it to her team, especially now.
“They are super competitive, much more competitive than the 2017 team,” said the South Carolina coach about his current team in the Final Four. “Day after day, they go after it, after they leave the premises, they are super cool again. Losing is not in your DNA. “
Their Gamecocks are back in the Final Four for the first time since winning the 2017 national championship, and on a similar path. Once again, they face Stanford in the Final Four to reach the title game. Once again, they might have to face a team from Connecticut that defeated them in the regular season, if they passed through Stanford.
Once again, Staley’s team is loaded with talent, with an injured key player – in 2017 it was Alaina Coates, this year Lele Grissett. This team does not have the veteran presence of that team, but it has a squad that played together for a whole year before this year, unlike that one.
Transfers Kaela Davis and Allisha Gray joined the starting lineup that year after being left out the previous season due to NCAA rules, and although they practiced with the USC in 2015-16, it is not nearly the same as playing. Bianca Cuevas-Moore started the season as a point guard, lost her job to freshman Ty Harris, but was back in the postseason when Coates was injured.
That team had a National Player of the Year with 6-5 A’ja Wilson, this team has the same with 6-5 Aliyah Boston. This team was dealing with a tremendously disappointing ending the previous season, an impressive Sweet 16 defeat by Syracuse. This team failed to finish what appeared to be a championship season in 2020 due to COVID-19.
What triggered this team’s success is like that one, and many others under Staley – individual stars in high school had to check their achievements to be intertwined in a Gamecocks team.
“It’s always an adjustment at the beginning, but the coach was saying the other day, we could all have gone to a different school and had 30 attempts per game, but for all of us to come together and play as a team together, it’s incredible,” said the guard Zia Cooke. “Having a group of all the stars get together and play together, I feel like this is showing us now the way we are playing as a team.”
Cooke is used to handling the ball, positioning himself around the perimeter and aiming for the basket. That’s what she did in Toledo, her homeland, where she became an American at McDonald’s.
She does that at USC, sometimes. But she is also passing the ball to Boston, while the Gamecocks’ attack runs from the inside out and doesn’t revolve around a scoring guard.
The same goes for Brea Beal, who won three Ms. Basketball awards in his native Illinois, but averages less than eight points per game at USC.
“During these moments of sacrifice is when your confidence can tip the wrong way, because you are not acting the way you think of your mind the way you need to,” said Staley. “After we lost to Texas A&M in the regular season, this team took on a different personality. This team just gave up. They peeled all the layers, and they just came together as one. “
Playing Stanford in Final Four, Staley remembered the 2017 clash. A decent start turned into a painful second quarter, where Gamecocks were not handling things well and needed to get to the locker room so they could adjust. They lost 29-20.
“I asked a serious question: ‘Why can’t you do what we want to do?’” Recalled Staley. “I think it was Kaela Davis, she raised her hand and said, ‘Why are we millennials?'”
The laughter of the entire room eased the tension, the USC returned to the court and won 62 to 53, taking the national title two nights later.
This team has that kind of slack. He also knows how to focus on work when it comes to winning a championship.
Follow David Cloninger on Twitter @DCPandC.