Dawn Staley on 2023 season: ‘you can't recreate this’

South Carolina Gamecocks women’s basketball is on another historic run and quest for a championship. This season, the Gamecocks have wins over some of the top programs in the country. That list includes victories over Maryland, Stanford, UCLA, UConn, and LSU; three of the four mentioned teams also rank in the top five of the nation.

With an impressive run of this magnitude, what can head coach Dawn Staley do to bottle this magic and recreate it for years to come? According to Staley, nothing.

“Yeah, no. You can’t recreate this. This is an experienced basketball team; this is a team that the core of this team basically came in together, wanting just to win,” said Staley. “Obviously, they’ve got goals, individual goals, and they want to do extremely well. But ultimately, the ultimate goal is to win. And I’m happy. We’ve done that a great deal. And some players have gotten their just do. Some players haven’t, just because they’ve sacrificed for the greater good of the team. I just hope that they’re rewarded this year because they sacrificed a great deal for the betterment of our team. And it’s worked, but I like to see them get some individual awards.”

After defeating LSU earlier in the month, South Carolina stands as the only undefeated team in the country. The Gamecocks have one more game to wrap up the regular season before it’s tournament time.

Up next for Staley and South Carolina

Up next for South Carolina is a matchup against the Georgia Bulldogs at home to end the season. In the two teams’ first matchup in early January, Georgia started off hot, taking a 29-26 lead into the half. But whatever Staley said to her team at halftime lit a fire under them as they came out and outscored the Bulldogs 42-22 in the second half.

That was enough for South Carolina to cruise to victory, winning the game convincingly 68-51. Georgia is not a team to be taken lightly, regardless of their record this season. So expect Staley to have her squad ready for their season finale on Sunday.

It would be hard for South Carolina to recreate a season like this, given all the newfound parity in women’s college basketball. But that’s not gonna stop the Gamecocks’ head coach from enjoying the season and highlighting the sacrifices her team is made to be the best.