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

Following a 70-63 win over Tennessee on Monday, South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley spoke to the media. Here is what she said.

Dawn, up 22 in the fourth quarter, everything seems comfortable what do you think was done differently? 

“Bad shots, bad decisions can be our nemesis at times — it was today. Fatigue was part of it, as well. Their pressure, it is a combination of things.”

As you probably know, Kim Caldwell had her baby a week ago and goes back on the sidelines. Do you have any kind of thoughts on her first season here at Tennessee and handling, you know, the weight of the expectations here while pregnant and giving birth to her child?

“She is very passionate about her team and coaching at Tennessee and I think she has gotten off to a great start. She is a coach that really wants to hang another banner. It comes with a sacrifice. She has got great help. She wanted to be here with her team. Women have to make decisions like that, and when they do I feel like they should honor them and let them know that we see you, we feel you, and we hear you. I congratulated her. It’s going to take a lot of people to have that work-life balance.”

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“Told us yesterday the first quarter was going to be a bit of a process, just because Tennessee is so different. What was that first quarter like in your perspective? And when did you feel like your team hadn’t settled in well?”

 “I mean, it took some adjusting. I thought we played too fast. We missed some easy shots that we normally make. I thought just happened through the second quarter. We found some easy ways to score once we beat the press, and then it was just a buildup. Then that build up was torn down in the fourth quarter by ill-advised shots, just bad shot selection. Fortunately, for us, we grew enough lead to where we were able to sustain.”

Just what’s your overall assessment of all the different ways they have been able to win?

“Our team is resilient. I mean, they can win a lot of different ways. The biggest pull on this stretch is mentally. Obviously, it’s a physical battle just to play in the SEC, but to do it against the top teams of this conference is hard. It took a lot of for us, togetherness, a lot of different styles of play. I thought tonight, I would much rather have Tennessee at the end of this, because it’s hard to it’s hard to recover after playing, having to play this style of play and have to go back out and play another game. It happened at the right time, and then we got a little break where we’ll decompress. But proud of our team for just manageable, just taking one game at a time and winning. Still being in the position of being undefeated in this league is not for the faint and heart to be in this league and to be undefeated having played the schedule they have played.”

Dawn, you said yesterday that Maddy McDaniel was likely going to see some time today, and she did. Just thoughts on her performance, especially overcoming that early turnover?

“I thought she gave us what she could. It was a hard game of playing as a young player. I thought she handled certain parts of it really well, and then you fall prey to that you can rip through that type of pressure. I thought at times she played fast and slow then slow, too fast. And other times she just played fast, where she couldn’t create other options. When you play fast and premeditated, it ends up being not a good situation as a point guard.”

This is one of the third or fourth game in a row where you’ve held one of the better offenses in the country. What was key to doing it again tonight?

“We defend. We knew they were going to come in and take a lot of shots, a lot of three hits, a lot of, I would say, quick shots. It’s making sure you can test them, making sure that they don’t go on the run like they went on the run.  We took better shots. I think we could have secured our lead a little bit better, but we didn’t. We do a really good job at linking up and connecting and making sure that we’re not giving them too many wide open shots.”

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Fourth straight game, Joyce Edwards, has led y’all in scoring the ninth time this year. What is one more little thing getting more comfortable every time she’s out there?

“Joyce plays the right way. Joyce makes basketball and good basketball decisions, and that’s why you see her flourish. She just plays within her capability. And, I’m not surprised. I’m probably more surprised at some of the decisions that some of our older players are making. She’s not one. She plays the right way. She played 29 minutes, and I would even play her five or six more.”

Coach, before the season started, I was asked to talk about the SEC and what I thought could happen. And I said it would be really hard with the added teams to get through this conference unscathed. After watching y’all, since you’re one non conference defeat, I’m having to revisit  that prediction, to say the least, now that you started eight and zero, that is very hard to do, and I know there’s eight more to go, but your defense is just suffocating. It’s some of the best defense I’ve seen in South Carolina play. Just how did y’all sort of flip that script so well?

“I mean, our staple is defense. We don’t know whether or not you’re going to be able to score a lot of points in this league. This league is based off defense, and if you’re able to defend, it gives you an opportunity to win every single time. We play the right way with how we play defense, and we play the right way offensively, and we play our type of defense we give, we give ourselves a really good chance of winning. When we don’t, i.e. the fourth quarter. We can lose to anyone.”

What are these next few days look like? How do you kind of manage that without a game this week, after such a grueling stretch?

“We will take two days off. We’ll take tomorrow off and Thursday off, and get back to the swinging things but I’m sure, some of our players will need to recover and just decompress a little bit and get back on it.”

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