Everything Dawn Staley said ahead of South Carolina's game against Arkansas

South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley spoke to the media ahead of the Gamecocks’ home game against Arkansas on Thursday night. Here is everything she had to say.

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Coach, how has the team responded in practice since the last game?

“Good. Had two good days of practice, just need to get back, and we need a game to get back to just playing our style of play and focusing and playing Gamecock women’s basketball style of play. It’s simple, we just got to apply it.”

Coach, only three losses on the year. Have you guys found there was a common theme? If so, did you harp on any of that over these days to clean up?

“Yeah, (the) common theme is just we didn’t play a resemblance of who we are. In the losses, the common thing was whether people force us to play that way or it is self-inflicted, it really just wasn’t us and we gotta get back to us.

“You take a loss, you have a tendency to think that everything’s broken, everything’s not broken. We just need to get back to our good habits, playing the way we need to play. This is part of our journey. The journey last year didn’t have a blemish as far as a loss, but they did have blemishes; they just were not in the form of a loss.

“We have to embrace the good, the bad, the ugly of whatever our journey is, we’re still in it and everything we want to accomplish is right there in front of us.”

After the game Sunday you said it wasn’t about basketball, explain what you mean by that.

“I Did? I think some things may not be about basketball, some things are just and I don’t know what they are, I don’t know what it is, I’m just throwing it out there.

“The team that took the floor against UCONN really wasn’t our team so as a coach you have a tendency to think hey this isn’t just about basketball, what is it about?

“We had a come to Jesus meeting, we apologized for our performances, and we moved on. We’re not gonna stay stuck in those spaces. I’m not gonna look for things, I’m just gonna call it what it is.

“Players have to step up, coaches have to step up, and if we want to accomplish the goals that we have out there, it’s gonna take a collective effort.”

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When you have, as you put it, a “come to Jesus meeting,” who are the players you see kind of step up, take leadership roles, or is it just coaches?

“I mean it’s everybody. Nobody liked the performance. Not one person, but we also have to be honest about ourselves and what we need to bring to the table and I do think our players are doing that. That’s not me to tell you, they want to share what they want to share, there were people stepping up and saying if you want to change things it starts with self.”

Dawn, after the game Geno said that their transition defense was a key to winning the game. Now that you’ve had a couple days to sit on the film, what do they do to kind of keep you guys out of rhythm and transition on offense, and how do you get back to form heading into Arkansas?

“I’m gonna say this, it was our transition D that killed us, and that was from taking bad shots and creating an imbalance on the defensive side. When we were locked into the game plan, from an offensive standpoint and a defensive standpoint we were pretty good. I know it’s hard to see with what the score and how well they shot the ball.

“Sarah was decent and Paige was decent, it was pretty much everyone else that really killed us and a lot of it was in transition. We can handle the threes in half-court that they made, it’s all transition. The easy buckets, it was rebounding. That’s what gutted us, transition and rebounds.”

You’ve been transparent about who needs to step up more, what areas need to be better. Could you describe walking that line between being vocal, who or what needs to be better, but also acknowledging that there might be some mental fatigue?

“Our most experienced players have to be better. Pao’s got to be better, Chloe’s got to be better, Feagin’s got to be better. Those are the players with the most experience.

“So yeah I do think there is a little bit of mental fatigue, I think it’s a little bit of the grind of the season. We do a really good job at camouflaging it. It doesn’t really spill over into a game of that magnitude, but you got to face the music. I’m not shying away from it, I think we do our best work when we are in this type of situation, so we’re going to embrace the loss, learn from it, and move on.” 

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