Everything Dawn Staley said after South Carolina's win over Charleston Southern

South Carolina head women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley spoke to the media following the team’s 82-46 win over Charleston Southern on Thursday. Here’s everything she had to say.

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On Staley’s halftime speech

“I said a lot, but I’m not going to blow my top. I understand where they are in this type of game. (I’m) not making excuses for them, but when you know, you know – you just try to fight and get them back to a good place. And, I mean, the question mark is… It’s just, they leave you with a lot of questions. They force us to question their ability to lock in and be disciplined. They force us to have questions about who should play, who shouldn’t play, all of these things. And it’s just teaching moments moments in which, I don’t know if it goes in one ear and out the other, or if you got to say it at another time and another place for it to really resonate with what we need as a team.”

On Joyce Edwards’ recent performance

“Joyce (Edwards) wants to be great. So, I think the stats are starting to become what greatness looks like. Hopefully, they’ll stay consistent like this. But if they don’t, it’s still her process. Everything is new to her – like, this whole season is going to be new. There are going to be things that are thrown at her that sometimes she’ll handle well, and sometimes she won’t – that’s the process of your journey.

“Fortunately for us, she’s figuring out what’s going on offensively. She’s not afraid of scoring; she’s not afraid of shooting. I think defensively is where she’ll make the most improvement because there are so many different looks. People play big; people play small; people are equally as strong and fast as she is. So, she’s got to figure out how to keep people in front of her, how to gauge, close-outs, all of those things. I’m just proud that she’s able to give us a lift when we needed a lift offensively.”

On South Carolina players looking for more playing time

“I mean, there’s no question. Joyce is going play for us – there’s no question. So, no, she’s not one that complains. I think we do a really good job at explaining to our players in real time, but we don’t give them time to go back and think about what we meant by this or that. (In) real time, we are handling situations. So, they could deal with them in real time because, when you don’t, they go back, they hear other people say what should be happening and less on what we’re saying. So, we just get it out, and we move on. We have short memories when it comes to it – we hit it, and we move on.”

On South Carolina’s struggles in the first half

“Sometimes it’s a focus thing. Sometimes, you don’t want to play the way that, probably, your coaches think you’re going to play, and it’s an adverse effect. Like, shooting 14% – that is, even on our worst days, you don’t really shoot 14%. Give us in (the) 20s, that’s one or two extra layups that we missed. And it’s just settling in. I mean, Charleston Southern was a good team that challenged us. They challenged us to keep them in front of us; they challenged us to guard the three, outside the three. They challenged us when they got ahead of the possession, and we had to scramble out, and they were finding the right matchup. And then, they challenged us to box them out, and we didn’t do a really good job throughout the game, especially in the first half.”

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On South Carolina not completing full-court transition pass attempts

“I think they saw where they could take advantage of things. And I wouldn’t take any of those passes away. I wouldn’t even say, ‘Don’t do that again’ – I mean, those were good, aggressive passes ahead. And that’s what we’ve been working on is to pass the ball ahead – get our bigs rim-running, get our guards out, sprinting; and when they’re open, you got to at least try it so you could teach from those moments. I mean, I wouldn’t have bet that Tessa (Johnson) and Raven (Johnson) would have smoked too lot of the layups – I wouldn’t bet against that.”

On whether South Carolina is where Staley believed it would be at this point of the season

“I really had not thought ahead – I’m just in the moment, just handling things in the moment. And I feel like, when we’re just staying in the moment, we’re a much better basketball team than saying that, at the break, ‘We will be 12-0, 11-0.’ Like, I didn’t do that last year, either. I just took every game as it came because you never know who you’re going get. You never know what team you’re going to get. If you get the team that is focused and ready to go, you feel a lot of comfort in that. If you get our first-quarter team, it makes it makes you wonder.

“So, I’m happy that we got over a really hard non-conference season with two non-conference games left to play. And (we’re) looking forward to our conference because it is… We play Wofford after the break, but (we’re) looking forward to our conference because it’s going to be another challenging opportunity for us to get better.”

On the growth Edwards has shown throughout the season

“I just think her trajectory is going in the right direction. I do think there is areas in what she has to improve in, especially defensively. And then, offensively, I like her aggressive – I like her being aggressive on the block; I like her attacking off the bounce. I like her mid-range (game), and I would like for her – if not this year, definitely over the summer – to increase her range to shoot a little bit more threes. We’re watching film, and we’re pointing out opportunities where she can stretch the floor a lot more. She’s just not used to it right now, but we’ll put her in some actions where we can pick and pop her, and she shoots some threes. We need to have that in our arsenal. And she’s probably, other than Maryam (Dauda), the best person that is more comfortable shooting threes out there.”

On what is at the top of Staley’s Christmas wish list

“When I leave this arena, I have nothing to do – like, nothing. Like, I got 24 miles to empty in my vehicle. I need to go to the gas station, pump gas and do nothing. I actually got a shop there too, so, I won’t be able to do that until Sunday, Monday and half of Tuesday because I got to go recruiting tomorrow. Yay me!”

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