Everything Dawn Staley said after the South Carolina-Iowa State game

South Carolina women’s basketball defeated Iowa State, 76-36, on Thursday in Fort Myers, Florida. Following the game, head coach Dawn Staley spoke with the media.

How much were y’all focusing on defense coming into the game? You don’t often see a 32-0 run when the other team has scored for 14 minutes. How much were y’all talking about that since UCLA, or was it just – I mean, I know you always like defense, but it just came together today.

Yeah. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. We just needed to put a complete game together. Obviously, there were some lapses in the UCLA game that weren’t characteristic of us.

We wanted to make sure that we played very similarly with our rotations and how we would guard (Audi Crooks). Obviously, you have to pay a lot of attention to her. It can’t be just one player. It has to be positions. And then you have to position yourself to help if the ball got into her. You’ve got to position yourself if you’re not in front. So, it is all of these things that we executed from our two days of preparation.

And then just from an offensive standpoint, if we could put together 40 minutes of what we did defensively, offensively in the same game, I think we’d be feeling really good about ourselves. We were consistent with it. So that is our nemesis – to be able to lock in on both sides of the ball and not have as many lapses or put them on the free-throw line as much as we did.

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That third quarter, you were obviously unhappy. But after that, 7 of 8 from the field, what adjustments were made? What did you kind of see in the first half of the third quarter, second half of the third quarter?

Well, a lot of that had to do with our shot selection. And that period right after halftime is when we took a couple of ill-advised shots that jump-started their offense. They got easy buckets. They saw the ball go in. And with a team like Iowa State, they only need to see that ball go in. And then it gets bigger and bigger.

So I think we just really had to clamp down. I think MiLaysia got a steal for a layup that allowed us to just kind of excel and kind of get our equilibrium back to a place where we started to defend a little bit better and we started taking more calculating shots.

What do you tell your team in those moments where it’s like we’re defending the same but maybe they’re not calling it the same? And how do you keep up that intensity?

Yeah, you got to make adjustments. We had to make adjustments. There was a stretch in the second quarter where they called us for a couple of touch fouls. We had to adjust. At halftime, we’re like this game is going to be called so much differently than even the second quarter.

So, we took their hit. And it actually starts on our offensive end. Like if we can take expected shots, our defense can get set up and not have imbalance. Once we have imbalance, it’s easier to score on us. That happens from what type of shot that we take on the other end.

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We had a state championship team here locally in the stands right by your bench. What’s kind of the responsibility that you and your team feel when young girls come watch you all play?

Our responsibility is to show them, be the example of how you need to take care of our game. Give it up. They should walk away from this game seeing us, knowing that … we didn’t score a whole lot of points, there wasn’t a whole lot of flash to what we were doing. It was fundamental basketball. Fundamental defensively. We tried to play fundamental offensively.

And, hopefully, they can take what the little things that we were doing out there, the communication, the rotations, the camaraderie that we had playing out there on the floor and know that it’s fun. It’s actually fun to play that way.

Te-Hina (Paopao) quarterbacked a lot of what you guys did on that 32-0 run. It’s not going to show up in the stat sheet, but what did you kind of make of her decision-making?

It is a privilege to coach Paopao. That’s one.

Two, when you have three pretty darn good point guards, you really can’t go wrong. Paopao, Raven, now Maddy. They do a great job at picking up where the other one left off. Or if the other one is not having that type of game, they can kind of see it and fill in for each other.

But Paopao, her defense was more impressive to me than her ability to facilitate. I’ve seen her facilitate before. I’ve never seen her pick up 94 feet time and time again when we subbed out Raven. That’s usually Raven’s job to do that.

But Paopao made a concerted effort to do it in practice the last two days. That’s one of the things. We got affirmations, and one of her affirmations was, I want to do a better job picking up the ball and pressuring the basketball.

And when you’re able to see it come to fruition, you know she’s going to be a better basketball player. I know her stock went up from a WNBA standpoint because of what she did today in picking that ball up.

That’s Joyce Edwards’ first career double-double. How much more comfortable did you see her, especially in the second half?

It was great. This is the Joyce that we envision having. And sometimes it takes a little bit longer than we think it’s going to take because she’s so smart and she’s able to compete at the highest level. But I hope she gains a lot of confidence from the way that we did it.

She was really efficient. She rebounded the basketball. She was flying around. Her defense was pretty darn good. She put together a complete game, and I’m truly happy for her because the last couple of games haven’t been the type of performances that are fitting for her.

It was pretty clear throughout the game they were having trouble getting back in transition. I imagine that that’s something you guys really worked on the last two days of prep because when you got in transition they were obviously lagging behind.

Well, we actually want to score a third of our points in transition because it just takes the pressure off what you have to do in the half-court. There was an emphasis on our post players running, getting down the floor, putting yourself in a position to maybe get an easy bucket or get down the floor and pancake somebody, so we can get you the ball and either you score it or at least accumulate some fouls. And I thought we did that very early in the basketball game. That helped us.

Joyce Edwards and Maddy. They’re exciting to watch when they’re on the floor together. I know you want them to play as sophomores by the time January, more than likely. Can you just talk about their development that you see the last couple games and where you see them in SEC play?

They both are high intelligent players that work extremely hard. I want them to continue to progress as they are. Maddy and Joyce have to play for us. They have to give minutes. We have to develop them. By the time that they’re sophomores or it’s SEC, then it doesn’t phase them.

To play in these type of games, to play against a Top-25 team, it’s much better than to play against an opponent in which we would just probably win in the first half. Iowa State was always going to be in the game with their ability to shoot the three. We forced their hand in not allowing them to get fully into their offense. And when you have that kind of disruption, it helps. And I think Joyce and both Maddy spearheaded that at different points of the game.

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