South Carolina women's basketball: Everything Dawn Staley, Kim Mulkey, and Kamilla Cardoso said about the brawl

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Sunday’s SEC championship game between South Carolina and LSU was marred by a benches-clearing fourth-quarter brawl that saw eight players ejected. Both coaches addressed the situation after the game.

With about two minutes left in the game, Fulwiley stole the ball from Flau’jae Johnson, who grabbed Fulwiley for an intentional foul to prevent a layup. As the Gamecocks ran to celebrate with Fulwiley, Johnson shoved Ashlyn Watkins with her forearm. 

As players were being separated, Kamilla Cardoso ran in and leveled Johnson. Johnson’s brother jumped onto the court and entered the fray as both benches cleared, police swarmed, and players were separated again.

After a review that lasted almost 15 minutes, Johnson’s foul was upgraded to an intentional foul and Cardoso was disqualified. All players from both benches were ejected. South Carolina finished the game with just six players, and LSU finished with just five.

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Kamilla Cardoso
Locker rooms were not open to the media, but Cardoso issued a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. She said: “I would like to extend my sincerest apologies for my actions during today’s game. My behavior was not representative of who I am as a person or the South Carolina program, and I deeply regret any discomfort or inconvenience it may have caused. I take full responsibility for my actions and assure you that I am committed to conducting myself with the utmost respect and sportsmanship in the future.”

Johnson has not posted anything on social media, but she spoke to Dawn Staley after the game and apologized for her role in the fight.

Kim Mulkey
Well, let me say this. Do you realize there was only one foul called on each team with two minutes to play in the fourth quarter? Are you kidding me? That might have created some of that. Not the way we play. We gonna foul your ass. Not the way they play. They’re going to foul your ass. But you only blew that whistle one time? Think about that now. Flau’jae, what I saw, intentionally fouled Fulwiley because she stripped her. Great move because she’s going to get a layup right there. Then some jawing went on with her and another player. Then the next thing I know, Cardoso just waylayed her. I ran because somebody came out of the stands, I think was Flau’jae’s brother, trying to keep him from doing anything crazy. That was all I know. I can’t tell you from my bench how many left the court. Obviously they saw it on film, said everybody had to go. Then I think one player for South Carolina didn’t leave the bench. But my question is: I don’t really know the rules, why weren’t the coaches tossed if they left the bench? Wouldn’t that be a hell of an ending? But I guess it’s just the players that leave the bench area. I don’t know. It’s ugly. It’s not good. No one wants to be a part of that. No one wants to see that ugliness. But I can tell you this: I wish she would have pushed Angel Reese. Don’t push a kid – you 6’8″. Don’t push somebody that little. That was uncalled for, in my opinion. Let those two girls that were jawing, let them go at it.

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Dawn Staley
“I mean, what you saw were two teams, highly competitive teams, trying to win a conference championship. They did not handle it well. Our players didn’t. Their players didn’t. It escalated. I want to thank the officials and everybody that jumped in, just kind of calmed the situation down. Then the penalties were what they were. They were well within the rules of ejecting the players that left the bench, even if they just stepped over the line of the bench. You can’t. You have to sit there and keep your composure. But I’m going to say this. Flau’jae came to me after the game, right after the game, she just apologized and said she’s not that type of player. I really appreciate that. That’s something that somebody won’t ever hear if I didn’t say anything. And she’s not. She’s a really good person. Things just got escalated. I’ll take responsibility for what happened from our side of it, which is we talk about these things as a team, and we try as much as possible to express to them how not to react in those type of situations. Real time is real time. I know that anybody, Kamilla, as well as the other four or five players that were ejected, I know if they had a chance to do it all over again, they would do it differently. But now we have that. I just don’t want the people who are tuning in to women’s basketball to see that and think that is our game, because it isn’t. Our game is a really beautiful thing. To be quite honest, this is a part of it now. So we have to fix it, and we have to move on.”

Staley later said it was a difficult learning experience:

“A lot of people ask me to compare last year’s team to this year’s team. That would have never happened with last year’s team. They would have been so political about it. If that would have happened, Aliyah (Boston) would probably have been the referee, “No, don’t do that.” Then you got this team, they’re protectors. So, yeah, it’s bittersweet. You want them to protect their sisters. At the same time, you want them to do it in a way in which you don’t get penalized, you’re not in a position to not be able to celebrate, which is something that’s super hard to do, like super hard to do, to win a SEC tournament championship. We’ll talk about it. But I know they will draw strength from it. They’ll get closer.”

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