South Carolina coach Dawn Staley has walked a fine line this season between instilling confidence in her players and being realistic about challenges the Gamecocks faced after losing six key players -- five of them starters -- from last year.
Michael Voepel covers the WNBA, women's college basketball, and other college sports for espnW. Voepel began covering women's basketball in 1984, and has been with ESPN since 1996.women's basketball coach Dawn Staley has walked a fine line this season between instilling confidence in her players and being realistic about challenges the Gamecocks have faced after losing six key players -- five of them starters -- from last year.
A national semifinal loss to Iowa ended that quest, and most of the team's experienced players moved on, including WNBA No. 1 draft pick Aliyah Boston. After being ranked No. 6 in the 2023-24 preseason Associated Press poll, South Carolina went to No. 1 after the first week of the regular season and has been there since.
"Indiana is a seasoned basketball team. I was afraid of the experience that they were bringing into the game," Staley said Saturday."We were fortunate enough to just get out to a big lead and a cushion, so to speak. Our team, sometimes when we have a cushion like that, we can take it to another level, we can open it up to 30 and 40. Or we can lose it and take it down to 10 or lose a lead.
"But again, they're never fazed by it," Staley said."We called it this -- even our coaches were like, 'Are you drinking the Kool-Aid?' A lot of times we're saying we're sipping but we're not going to take a full gulp, as to how good this team is."
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