Everything Dawn Staley said after South Carolina's win over Duke

Following South Carolina women’s basketball’s 81-70 win over Duke on Thursday night, Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley addressed the media.

The following is an edited transcript of her comments.

Here’s the transcript organized by questions and responses:

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On Chloe Kitts being fed/having the hot hand…

“No, Ray (Raven Johnson), that was all Ray. Ray called it in the first half, and then when we needed a bucket, she just went back to it and kept going back to it, and Chloe delivered, and she was due. She was due for a good one.”

Was the first half what she envisioned offensively with points and assists?

“I mean, I don’t know what I envisioned, right? Because sometimes we don’t know what we’re getting. We know what we want. Like, we really know what we’re, when we look good, when we’re most efficient, we know what that looks like. Sometimes our players really, they don’t know what that looks like because they think all open shots are good shots, and they’re not, okay? So we sometimes struggle with that.

I thought we did a really good job in the first half of taking advantage of numbers when we had them, right, and then reversing the ball when we didn’t have numbers, which increases our shooting percentage. You know, I thought Duke did a great job at disrupting and not allowing us to make entry passes, and I thought we did a good job at just going a little bit deeper into our offense where if you’re not going to allow us to make an entry pass, and our post did a really good job flashing to the ball, and we played through them a lot, and it was really good to see, you know, both the guards and the post connected.”

On Maddy McDaniel’s minutes tonight…

“Maddy’s solid. Like, if you can have a young point guard that can just play solid and is reliable, like, she is reliable. Like, she doesn’t turn the ball over a whole lot. She handles the ball well. She knows what we need, how we want to play and execute on both sides of the basketball. She can score, like, you know, you put her in a high pick and roll, I mean, she’s delivering for us time and time again. Just solid, like, you know, it’s unfortunate that we don’t have more minutes to give her because, you know, all of our point guards are playing really well.”

Expanding on McDaniel…

“I mean, she’s really a luxury. You know, as a coach, you look down the bench and you see her, and you want to play her more, which is just like, hey, we got to get Raven going. We got to get Paopao going. We got to get all these players going. And you know when you call her to go into the game, she’s going to be solid. She’s made me feel that way. So sometimes you just kind of let the other guards do their thing because you know she’s going to be solid. Because of that, she sometimes loses out on some minutes. I mean, tried to get her in in the first quarter, which we did, and I thought she did some really nice things for us.”

On assessing underclassmen and splitting minutes…

“Just being solid. Chloe had it going on early, so Joyce’s minutes were off a little bit. She didn’t go into the game at her normal substitution time. And I just told her that, I’m going to hold off on you because Chloe is playing well. And Chloe, she needs these minutes, these extra minutes that we’re giving her in the first quarter. And it kind of probably threw Joyce off a little bit. But I know Joyce can handle those situations. And I think Joyce came in and gave us some valuable minutes. Got a steal and a layup and fouls. She’s getting better and better. She’s reliable. I just want somebody that you know when you call their number, you know, is not going to tilt too far to the right or left. They’re going to stay kind of in the middle. And they’re predictable. And that’s what our young players are giving us right now.”

On new AD Jeremiah Donati being at the game/have they met?

“Never met. I just met him before the game. I thought he was much shorter than he was. When I first met him, like, because I read he was a soccer player, I’m thinking, okay, shorty, he’s like 6’2″. It’s a new AD. I think we’re both looking forward to working with each other. And hopefully, he’s got an eye, ear, and heart for women’s sports”

On confidence in Milaysia/calling a clearout for her late…

“Yeah, we have to get her going. I mean, we have to get her going. And it is that particular play, the way she scored on that play is what we need from her. She can still do what she does, but we need more of those fundamental, straight-line drives where she’s utilizing her skill set and her superpower, her speed, her jumping ability. That is like, picture perfect. That’s it. You can get a lot more of those, so many more of those. So, yes, we have to get her going, and we will. We will. We’re fortunate that, some of our other guards are playing well, so we’re not feeling it as much, but we will. We will feel her not filling the stat sheet up. So we got to get her going.”

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On keeping shooting consistency going forward…

“We just have to be more disciplined. I mean, we’re watching in the first half, second quarter, Paopao came down, turned the ball over, took a bad shot, and then the very next time, she came down and turned it over. I think Richardson got a three off on one of them, and then they scored back to back, and I’m like, I just tell them that this is it. Bad shot, bad turnover, gets their score going.

They got into our lead, and you just have to make them aware of it, and then we got to stop the bleeding. It can’t be just a timeout. It has to be the players that are on the floor, they have to recognize it, so we have to just familiarize them with it. Sometimes that is in the breakage of play, timeout. Sometimes, you’ll call a set where it demands for them to reverse the basketball.

On what she saw from her team to weather Duke’s runs…

“I mean, they’re a good basketball team that can score a lot of points. We knew that they would have a run, whether it’s early or late or whenever. I think the group that we had in probably played a little bit too long, and I just try to give them an opportunity because, the group that was in, the second group that was in, pushed the lead back up to 20, and then the lead went to 10 like that.

Bad shots, bad decisions, bad defense, and then we really couldn’t keep them in that much longer, so, you know, got back in the game, and Chloe was very heroic for us to seal the deal for us, but we’re playing great competition. They’re not going to go away. Duke’s not going to go away. They were going to play for 40 minutes. We knew that. It was just us being able to stop the bleeding and force them to do something that they weren’t doing, which was turning us over, us taking bad shots, you know, them getting offensive rebounds. They out-rebounded us for sure. Yes, they out-rebounded us 18 offensive rebounds. It’s hard. It’s hard to guard against that.

On her connection to Maddy McDaniel/message throughout the season…

“Maddy makes me smile. She really does. She makes me smile because she’s such a, her mother calls her her sweet girl. And she’s really sweet. She’s smart. She’s quiet. She is a hard worker. She is a pleaser. She is playing well. She chose us. She could have gone to any school. Duke was one of her schools. Georgia was one of her schools. And she chose to come here. A

And when you choose to come here knowing that we had Papa, knowing we had Raven, that could be intimidating. That could be some people told her she’s, some people told her that she’s making the worst decision of her life. And we won’t play her until her junior year. I’m happy because she’s proven them wrong. But a player like Maddy is she’s always going to be successful in anything that she does because of her approach to everything that she does.”

What it’s been like to watch Chloe want the ball in big moments…

“You know, Chloe wants it bad. Sometimes it works for her and sometimes it works against her. Today it worked for her. I mean, just as early as yesterday, she’s telling me I don’t believe in her. Like, where you get that from? What are you? Part of it is, you can look at the minutes and her minutes decreased over Thanksgiving. But I mean, we were winning by 30, 40 points. And sometimes allowing some youngsters to get some minutes that will strengthen our team, you may look at it as, I don’t believe in her. She did take some bad shots over Thanksgiving. And I took her out because of it.

She didn’t take bad shots today. And because of that, she gets this kind of performance. When she takes bad shots, it kind of lends itself to us not being able to write the track. Because if she’s taking a bad shot, if Ashlyn takes a bad shot, if Joyce takes a bad shot, we’re a bad shooting team. My expectation is for her to take better shots so she can set the example because she can score. Like, she can really score the basketball.

So I’m happy because Chloe pours into herself. She does all the right things in regards to prepping herself. She does all the right things in making lifestyle changes in order for her to play this way. She wants to be a pro. So she’s active in doing things and creating habits that will help her. So I want basketball to repay her for that every time she steps on the floor because there’s so many that they just come to practice and that’s it. They don’t do any extra. She does all the extra. So I want basketball to repay her in this way a lot more times than it has.”

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