National title or bust? How Gamecocks, Dawn Staley manage the weight of expectations
Dawn Staley asked each player on the South Carolina women’s basketball team to be “selfish” and tell their coach what they wanted to accomplish this season.
A number of players listed individual achievements — awards, honors and prestige. Staley supports those goals. She wants her players to reach them all.
One player, a freshman, gave the Gamecocks’ head coach an answer she described as “so simple, pure and innocent.”
“I just want to win the national championship,” the freshman said. “I don’t even know about all those other awards they’re talking about.”
South Carolina won a national championship in 2017 and came incredibly close to playing for another last season. Staley welcomes the “familiar pressure” that comes with holding the highest of expectations.
And she stressed that there’s nothing wrong with each member of the team having their own individual dreams. It’s in their nature as athletes to compete, and South Carolina players have already racked up preseason honors.
Junior Aliyah Boston has been named to the preseason Associated Press All-America first team and coaches’ All-SEC first team along with junior Zia Cooke. Senior Destanni Henderson was on the All-SEC second team.
“You want personal achievement, but when it’s all said and done, we want to win the national championship,” Staley said. “It’s from the mouth of a baby to the ears of everyone else. I hope that’s what we settle on.”
The Gamecocks, returning every member of last year’s Final Four squad and the nation’s top 2021 recruiting class, start the season ranked atop the AP Top 25 for the second consecutive year.
Staley described it as “cool” to be ranked No. 1 ahead of the season, but acknowledged the Gamecocks were ranked at the top last year before N.C. State beat a then-No. 1 South Carolina 54-46 in Colonial Life Arena. The Gamecocks travel to Raleigh to take on the Wolfpack in their first game this season on Nov. 9.
“We get a do-over,” Staley said. “We especially get a do-over with the team that really knocked us off being No. 1, N.C. State, to start the season off. I think it’s good in that regard.”
Even with preseason chatter and high expectations, Staley said it isn’t tough to maintain South Carolina’s focus. The Gamecocks see their weaknesses in practice every day, and falling short of their own expectations daily keeps up the motivation.
Staley is focused on making layups, which she called “the nemesis that plagued us all last year.” She’s hoping to see better point guard play and the continuation of habits she’s seen grow throughout practice. Staley is looking for quick scores, finding the best shot, ball movement and defensive disruption.
“We have all the key ingredients, and we just have to work the details,” Staley said. “The margin of error is that small of a layup and a putback. It’s that small, so we’re working from that vantage point rather than just broader things.”
In Monday’s home exhibition against Benedict, South Carolina’s 2021-22 debut, Staley wants to see full effort. Everyone’s healthy for Monday’s home exhibition against Benedict with the exception of graduate LeLe Grissett, who continues to nurse a lower right leg injury suffered in the fourth quarter of last year’s SEC Championship game.
“We need to make sure that we’re exhausting ourselves,” Staley said. “Because we’ve got a lot of players to rotate in.”
The preseason accolades are nothing new for Staley or the Gamecocks. Meeting expectations comes down to what she’s looking for in South Carolina’s exhibition: habits.
“It’s familiar pressure,” Staley said. “When it’s familiar pressure, you know how to handle the expectations of it. It’s just routine. The same habits that we ask our players to form that we have as a coaching staff to stay on task and get our team better every day.”
South Carolina vs. Benedict exhibition
When: 7 p.m. Monday
Where: Colonial Life Arena
TV or stream: None
This story was originally published October 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "National title or bust? How Gamecocks, Dawn Staley manage the weight of expectations."
