Dawn Staley breaks down Kamilla Cardoso's game winner, shares joy of it coming in front of her family

South Carolina walked off a win in the SEC women’s basketball tournament semifinals on Saturday in unexpected fashion, with forward Kamilla Cardoso hitting a buzzer-beating 3 — the first of her career — to win it. And head coach Dawn Staley happily recounted how that play unwound minutes later on the ESPNU desk.

Given Cardoso’s acumen around the rim and lack of shooting, Staley had an inkling she’d be open and at least the smart choice to have the inbounds pass go to. And with no timeouts, once the ball did end up in Cardoso’s hands, all parties had to act fast with the remaining seconds ticking down.

Cardoso turned, squared up to the basket with Tennessee leading by two, and banked in what might be the biggest shot of her career. And she did it in front of those closest to her, who had traveled from Brazil to see her play.

“We didn’t have any timeouts but I knew with the players that we had on the floor pretty much the only player that was going to be open was Kamilla,” Staley said. “So I just told her, Raven [Johnson], to get the ball to Kamilla and then I told Kamilla, ‘Hey pass it to Pao’ [Te-Hina Paopao] and at the last second, I was like ‘Kamilla shoot it.’ Oh my god, it couldn’t happen to a better person. She’s worked. And her mom, her sister, her agent, the first time they get a chance to see her play and she gives them that. Unbelievable.”

Staley was asked what went on her mind in making that split-second decision to yell to Cardoso to shoot the ball.

And she deftly censored herself while on-air, not repeating quite the language she had used in the heat of the moment.

“Well it was like 1.1 seconds,” Staley said. “She didn’t really have the opportunity to pass it to ‘Pao and I saw how far they were playing off of her. I would have played off of her as well. So you know the last thing that came into my mind was ‘Kamilla, shoot that blanking blank.’ That’s what I said, ‘Shoot that blanking blank.'”

And reflecting on the fact that so many of Cardoso’s loved ones and people important to her got to see what will surely be one of the more memorable single plays of her career.

“Favor. Favor. Favor. Uncommon favor. Uncommon favor. Unbelievable. Unbelievable,” Staley said. “There are no words. I’m just happy. I’m happy we made all these people here happy and they get to come back and see us possibly win another SEC championship.”