Everything Dawn Staley said ahead of South Carolina's matchup with Georgia

South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley spoke to the media ahead of the Gamecocks’ road trip to face Georgia on Thursday night. Here’s everything she had to say.

Georgia’s system has given you guys some trouble the last couple of years, what makes it so tough? 

“I mean people get up to play. We don’t always get up. We need to get up and stay up. They are different this year. They are very athletic. They play zone half the time, which is pretty active. Just relentless on both sides of the basketball. So, we got to play, 40 minutes.” 

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You said your team was pretty rusty last game, just how have you tried to get them to shake off that rust? 

“Part of it is some rest, and some of it is just active rest. You just got to get down and going and practice. So we did a little bit of all of that, but it is this time of the season where you have to find an extra oomph to get you over the hump because this league is tough. You need to take advantage of your bye weeks and I think we did a good job with that. You know when you do that, you lend yourself to being a little rusty, but I do think rest is equally as important as working out.”

Along with A’ja’s (Wilson) shoes yesterday, I saw the highlighters got some flip-flops in a NIL deal. Could you talk about that and how it feels to know your practice players highlighted in that way?

“They sacrifice so much and they work so hard. Part of it is that they love basketball and the other part is that they know they are helping us. I try to come up with innovative gifts, Christmas gifts. I have partnerships with different people, OOFOS was cool enough and we gave them a highlighters design to put on their recovery shoes. A lot of companies don’t have recovery shoes, so we don’t want to mess with the competition when it comes to like Under Armour because we are an Under Armour school. Recovery shoes are pretty cool. They do enough for us, that I know their dogs are hurting sometimes.”

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At this point we are less than a month away from the SEC tournament, not looking ahead too far, but is there one or two things you want to see this team key in on in preparation for that?

“I mean, rebound and boxing out. We are getting outrebounded. We are nip and tuck just in the rebounding edge. We just have to be better and do better. Are we talented?  Yes, we are a talented basketball team. So how do you nullify talent? You work hard. You do the things we aren’t doing very well and we are not boxing out and rebounding very well. People are getting a lot of offensive rebounds on us, so we have got to tighten that up.”

Is that a thing you can fix with coaching? Is it effort? How do you address that, especially midseason? 

“You fix it with film. It doesn’t lie. You show it over and over again. We are working with competitive people. You show them something that they are not doing well over and over again, they are not going to want to see it. They are not going to want to see it in front of their peers and in front of 18,000 people. So it’s just that, it’s a pull on the very thing that keeps them wired to play at a very high level and do it in a way that makes them look good.” 

Last week with Carolina Calls, you mentioned how you almost took Sania Feagin out of the lineup earlier in the season. How do you feel she’s responded since texting and asking for another chance?

“Great. I don’t give any of my players opportunity. They earn it. I did that very early in my career when I was at Temple and I did it off of potential. I knew that this player could be really good and maybe starting would be the thing that keeps them motivated. I was wrong, so I have never made that mistake. I never told A’ja Wilson that she was going to start or any one of our players that they were going to start because you get them in here and you don’t know. They could be the most talented individual, but then you get them with other talented individuals that work really hard, that understand and can make the transition a lot smoother and you start them over which leads to a disaster. Not from just in-house, parents, agents, and all of that. Feagin earned it, we just weren’t getting the results we wanted in I don’t know, three or four games that we played. Sometimes I was thinking of putting her in a more natural position which is coming off the bench and giving us a boost off the bench, but sometimes you have to listen to her. She’s put in a lot of work and if she is asking for one more chance, she has put in enough work just this year to get another chance.”

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Speaking of A’ja (Wilson), I know you got yourself a pair of the A1s, what do you think of them?

“Comfortable. I don’t like basketball shoes. I like comfort at my age. I can actually wear them anywhere and not feel like I need to take them off anytime soon. Pink, I don’t know if pink is my color, but hopefully they will make up a color that way we all appreciate it the way we like to appreciate it.”

Any word of encouragement for the Eagles fans, score prediction, and messages? 

“Rest assured, my Eagles fans, we got this one. Get mad if we turn the ball over, fumble the ball, if they score on us, but just remember when the clock strikes zero we will be winners. I don’t know how much, I would like two and a half touchdowns, but that seems a bit bold. It doesn’t matter. Push us over the finish line to get us a Super Bowl.” 

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