Scott Davis: This is the team we've been waiting for

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As sports fans, sometimes we forget what we’re doing it all for.

Day after day, week after week, year after year, we keep doing what we’ve always done: We keep hoping, keep supporting, keep rooting and pulling and screaming for our teams. Rarely do we ask ourselves why. Rarely do we spend time wondering where all of that time and energy is going, whether it’s all being stored somewhere in an imaginary Sports Fan Savings Account to be repaid in full someday.

We just keep going, almost as though on muscle memory. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

But somewhere, way down deep inside all of us, is a dream that never dies – a dream that a player, a coach, a team or a program will eventually reward us for all the time and energy, all of the cheering, all of the heartache, all of the ups and downs we’ve endured.

We hope maybe there’s cosmic payback for all of the times across all of the decades that we’ve sat slumped in a chair, completely broken, too shattered to move or speak, because a team we love just lost on a last-second buzzer-beater or Hail Mary.

Maybe, just maybe, if we never give up and never lose faith, one of those teams we’ve been waiting for – the genuine article, a team of a lifetime – will come along and remind us why we stuck around.

I’m here today to let you know that one of those teams is playing right now.

They proudly wear the logo of the University of South Carolina, and they represent it as well as any athletic program ever has in the school’s long history.

Starting Friday night – and continuing hopefully through Sunday – Coach Dawn Staley and the Gamecock women’s basketball team will be gunning for another national championship.

With her fourth Final Four in the books over the last seven years, Staley now officially leads one of those programs that we spend a lifetime waiting to watch.

Win or lose this weekend, this is the team we’ve been waiting for.

Don’t let this moment pass you by.

Worth the Wait

As a lifelong fan of the University of South Carolina athletic programs and the Atlanta professional sports teams, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had many “Wait…why do I do this to myself?” moments over the years.

Occasionally a team will jump out of the crowd and shower you with a brief blessing – like when Steve Spurrier’s early 2010’s Gamecocks kept winning 11 games and beating Clemson, or just last fall, when the Atlanta Braves surprisingly won the World Series. It happens, and it’s always fun when it does.

But only once had I felt that pristine bliss of knowing that one of my teams was the premier program in the game, the envy of everyone else in the sport, because of a sustained and lasting run punctuated by titles. It happened across a decade when Ray Tanner’s baseball team was making six College World Series appearances and winning two championships.

I almost couldn’t believe it was real.

We were the team that everyone everywhere wanted to be. There’s nothing more you can attain as a fan that this feeling, this knowledge that you have climbed long enough to finally reach the mountaintop. It makes everything that has come before – all of the agonizing losses, all of the near-misses, all of the success that keeps going to villains and rogues – worth it.

I thought I’d probably never have that feeling again.

Until now.

Even if the Gamecocks don’t bring home the trophy this weekend, there can be no debate now that they are the game’s most important program. They are the hunted, the team with the most fans, the best and most charismatic players, and the most recognizable coach in the sport.

The journey was long and they have arrived.

And this feeling? It was worth the wait.

Defining Greatness

They can win just about any way you need them to.

That’s one way you can tell that this edition of the South Carolina women’s basketball team is legitimately great: They simply get it done by any means necessary.

Is there an opportunity to blow an overmatched opponent off the floor? They can do that, as evidenced by their brutally efficient takedown of Creighton to secure a spot in the Final Four, to the tune of 80-50.

Need them to grind out a defensive slugfest? They can do that (as Miami learned in this year’s Tournament, losing to the Gamecocks by the unsightly score of 49-33). Perhaps what they do better than anything else is simply outlast an opponent, as North Carolina found out a couple of games ago.

If they need to scorch the nets offensively, they can. If they need to win with rebounding and defense, it’s accomplished. Whatever works.

But the true sign that you’re following one of those rare, singular Teams of a Lifetime is that it becomes genuinely shocking when they don’t come through.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were spending a late afternoon watching the Gamecocks play Kentucky in the SEC Tournament championship game from a television set inside an empty Italian restaurant in Roswell, Georgia. You remember this game, I’m sure.

The Gamecocks held a lead late, and it kept dwindling, and dwindling, and my wife (who is not an ardent basketball fan regardless of whether it’s being played by men or women) suddenly looked up from her phone and said, “Wait…we’re not going to actually lose this game, are we?”

We did.

It was stunning, like watching the sun fall out of the sky and land in your backyard.

Just 15 years ago, the idea that I would spend an afternoon watching the Gamecocks in the SEC Tournament women’s finals – in a Georgia restaurant, no less – is what would have been stunning. Now here I was, shocked and speechless that I’d just watched them actually lose a basketball game (as though that were something even the greatest teams might not occasionally do).

In my life as a sports fan, I’ve grown all too accustomed to losing. Losing, even in the most painful of ways, is never shocking to me.

This loss was shocking.

Because this team is the Team of a Lifetime.

Because this team is the Team We’ve Been Waiting For.

I will be watching them this weekend.

And I do not plan to be shocked.

Let’s go bring home that trophy.

Tell me what you think about this Team of a Lifetime by writing me at [email protected].

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