Dawn Staley downplays extra buzz surrounding game against UConn
Dawn Staley says No. 4 South Carolina hasn’t been looking ahead to their top 10 non-conference matchup with No. 7 UConn.
Staley was asked postgame on Thursday night about the upcoming game against the Huskies on Sunday. With that, she hasn’t felt like the Gamecocks were thinking about Connecticut yet this week despite knowing that they are in fact coming up on their schedule.
“No,” said Staley. “I mean, I think this team stays in the moment. I know they know we play UConn on Sunday. You can’t — you can’t get around it.”
South Carolina and UConn, two of the biggest brands in women’s college basketball, have met 13 times in Staley’s tenure. Connecticut leads overall at 8-5 but South Carolina is 5-1 since 2020 in the series. Eleven of those have been scheduled in the regular season while a pair were games later on in the postseason. Connecticut beat South Carolina twice, each in blowout fashion, in 2018 with the second coming in the Elite Eight while the Gamecocks beat the Huskies twice, each also by double digits, in ’21-’22 with the second coming in the national title game of the NCAA Tournament.
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However, South Carolina and UConn have had to focus this month after respective losses for each in the last two weeks. The Huskies lost another non-conference matchup on the road in the SEC with an 80-76 loss at Tennessee for their third total on the season. The Gamecocks then had to come back this week following their second loss on the year at Texas, which they did with a 38-point win over Florida on Thursday.
“Like, it almost – we didn’t skip over this game but, you know, a lot of people have just moved on to, like, UConn,” Staley said. “This league is unforgiving. Like, we didn’t take Florida lightly. Florida scores a lot of points and we were very mindful of that. We wanted to make sure that that they aren’t scoring 80 and 90 points like they have against some other teams.”
Still, with the weekend ahead, the attention of the sport will look to Columbia come tipoff between the Gamecocks and Huskies. Only one will then enter next week without a second loss in the month of February.