Scott Davis: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Scott Davis has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter year-round (the following is his most recent) and a column during football season that’s published on GamecockCentral.com. To receive Scott’s newsletter every Friday, sign up here.

Maybe adding Texas and Oklahoma to the league might finally do it.

Wasn’t that what everyone was saying back during the offseason?

Maybe some new blood was just what the doctor ordered for changing the hierarchy of women’s basketball in the Southeastern Conference. You’d have forgiven our fellow SEC colleagues if they’d been thinking it: If we can’t get it done, we’ll take anybody as long as it isn’t South Carolina again. Texas, Oklahoma, anybody. Somebody. Just please, not those Gamecocks another time.

After all, Dawn Staley and South Carolina have owned the sport for a decade now. You can almost feel the pressure building on the shoulders of our rivals. Staley keeps adding SEC championships to the trophy case, and our peers across the league keep looking for answers – any answers.

They install new coaches and make splashy hires. They announce publicly and loudly that they’re “making a strong commitment to women’s basketball at this university.” They devote money and resources to a sport they’d too long overlooked.

And at the end of the year, they look up at the top of the standings and find the Gamecocks there. Again.

It has to be absolutely maddening for these poor folks.

For us, it’s everything that is good: It’s exciting, exhilarating, hilarious, rewarding, special and spectacular.

Welcome to the place where championships never end.

South Carolina added yet another one this past weekend, dominating Texas in the SEC Tournament final in Greenville to claim Staley’s ninth SEC Tournament title to go along with the same number of regular season league championships.

Because we live in a fallen world, we must reasonably expect that there will come a day when a season will end, and South Carolina won’t be crowned the SEC champion.

It just won’t be in 2025.

And now they’re in line to potentially receive the number one overall seed in the NCAA Tournament this Sunday and make another run at a fourth national championship.

As for our SEC rivals? They’ll have another year to look for the answers again.

Good luck to them.

Their Least Favorite Subject

As South Carolina’s dominance has ground on – and on – you can sense that it’s beginning to get under the skin of coaches across the league. Every time they’re asked to talk about the Gamecocks, a prickly defensiveness rises quickly to the surface, and they start grasping at straws to explain away South Carolina’s unending excellence.

Following the SEC Tournament title game, Texas head coach Vic Schaefer used its location in the Palmetto State at Greenville’s Bon Secours Wellness Arena as a crutch for explaining his team losing by nearly 20 points. “When you’re playing South Carolina at home in front of their own fans, it’s a road game,” Schaefer said.

Uh-huh.

Of course, it’s not surprising that Schaefer is tired of finding reasons why his team is losing to the Gamecocks. As the coach at Mississippi State and now Texas, he’s now 0-5 against Staley in the SEC Tournament championship (with two of those losses occurring in the extremely non-Greenville cities of Jacksonville and Nashville).

For good measure, Staley and the Gamecocks have also beaten Schaefer-led squads in the Elite 8 and the national championship game – neither of which were played anywhere near the Palmetto State’s borders. Still, at least Schaefer has consistently praised Staley and acknowledged her dominance – which can’t be too difficult since he’s 3-13 lifetime against Dawn.

LSU head coach Kim Mulkey, on the other hand, has had a much harder time bending the knee.

Earlier this season, after South Carolina rolled up LSU in Columbia, Mulkey kept droning on about the Gamecocks’ having 10 McDonald’s All-Americans on the roster (as though she were competing with walk-ons and scrubs she’d picked up from an intramural team on campus).

More recently, Kentucky coach Kenny Brooks also blamed the Golden Arches for his team’s demise at South Carolina’s hands, groaning in the postgame that “they were bringing in McDonald’s All-Americans…and just seeing which one was going to play better.”

The hidden subtext here is that the Gamecocks have a vast talent advantage, and therefore, these coaches couldn’t possibly be expected to be compared on even footing with Dawn as tacticians and program-builders.

Of course, there certainly weren’t any McDonald’s All-Americans anywhere near Columbia before Staley arrived here. She did the work of convincing elite players and their parents that this was a place where they’d win.

And so they have.

And all of this nonsense prompted a smiling Dawn to respond on X earlier this month by singing the McDonald’s jingle.

Not Time to Turn the Page

Beyond the SEC, it’s clear that fans of many programs throughout women’s basketball are ready to turn the page on South Carolina and Dawn Staley.

But the Gamecocks don’t appear ready to hand over the throne just yet.

After the team suffered back-to-back losses to Texas and Connecticut earlier this season, there was a glimmer of hope throughout the sport that the NCAA title might be up for grabs in 2025.

And indeed, it still might be.

UCLA also defeated South Carolina in Los Angeles earlier this season (ending the Gamecocks’ 43-game winning streak), and another LA team – Southern Cal – looks formidable. UCONN’s Geno Auriemma is among the nation’s coaches who have become exasperated by being asked about Staley’s dominance in recent years – he’d love nothing more than to return his team to the top of the hill at season’s end.

But someone’s going to need to actually do it first.

And until that happens, it will be nothing more than all the fuss about Greenville and McDonald’s and everything else these rival coaches have leaned on to explain away South Carolina’s never-ending supremacy.

It will just be talk.

Meanwhile, the Gamecocks do their talking on the floor.

Ba da ba ba bah – I’m loooovin’ it.

Tell me how you’re feeling about another championship run by writing me at [email protected].