Everything Dawn Staley said previewing the South Carolina vs. Iowa State game

South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley spoke with the media on Wednesday to preview Thursday’s Iowa State game. Here’s everything she had to say.

What can you do to jump-start the team at the beginning of games?

“Bring it to their attention. They feel that we haven’t gotten off to some great starts. We’re not gonna change. We’re gonna get better as far as starting better. I think when we get ball reversals, we’re a much more efficient basketball team. So, we brought that to their attention. When we don’t get ball reversals, it’s a drastic shift in our efficiency. So, we’ve got to incorporate a little bit more of that, and we got to open the floor up a little bit for them to have some room to operate.”

Possible lineup changes

“No, not at all.”

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The team’s response to losing. Have they done the thing you wanted them to do to get ready for the game?

“Yes, that’s what a team does. This is a resilient group. This is a team that, obviously, hasn’t dealt with a whole lot of losing, but it’ll shake you for a moment. That 24-hour rule. Bask in the glory of a (win). You handle a defeat, and you handle it with grace, but you handle it with learning lessons. Things were exposed, and hopefully, we can fill some of those holes and, you know, get back to happier times.”

What has been the focus of the past couple of days in practice?

“Our offense. Our offense getting better looks and getting ball movement. The ball’s been sticking too much to individual players. And it’s stagnant. We need to get our bigs involved. So we’re gonna look to get them the ball in positions that they can score, whether that’s two feet in the paint or whether that’s hitting the mid-range shots. And if you’ve got three-point range, you can take good, fluid, rhythm, threes.”

Learning lessons painfully through defeat

“The only painful thing was our offense. Our defense was decent. UCLA doesn’t shoot as well as they shot. They were ready for us. We bring out the best in people. So we’re gonna shift that and give it to UCLA; UCLA is gonna feel the target on their backs, and they’re going to feel everybody’s best. And then we’re just going to fall back to where people want us to be anyway.

“We’re going to be better. Our offense, 60 points is not going to win you a whole lot of basketball games nowadays. So we’ve got to get better. We got to put points on the scoreboard, and we got to do it as a collective group. Not one individual is playing well here or another one’s playing well here. We’ve got to do it as a collective group. We know that. So that’s what we’ve been working on the last couple of days.”

MiLaysia Fulwiley and transfer chatter after lack of playing time against UCLA

“Here’s the thing: People go crazy. It’s MiLaysia’s process. It’s her process. Everybody has a process. Everybody wants to say, you know, maybe transfer. Everybody wants to say … We trust over here. We trust. We trust our process. And our process is sometimes painful. Our process is sometimes great.

“Also, our process, sometimes, the greatness camouflages what you really need to work on. That’s with everybody. Malaysia and I are good. It’s the other people that have some issues with what’s going on here. Our house is tight.”

Is that a little strange, considering what South Carolina has become? Hey, let’s blow the whole thing up.

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“Yeah, we’re not a blowup type, you know? We’re, we’re a grinding team. We grind all the time, right? Even in our winning, we’re still grinding. And now that we take a loss, we’re gonna grind. We only know one way to do it, and that’s to grind.

“There is nobody on this side of the court that’s really feeling like the bottom has fallen out. So we’re gonna continue to do what we do. We love basketball over here. We absolutely love it. We love it for the good and the bad of it. We love it for the challenges.

“And we’re gonna continue to get this team where it needs to be. It’s unfortunate that we got the type of schedule that doesn’t lend itself to create happier times for everybody. It’s our choice, though, to do that. It’s our choice. It’s only gonna make us better.”

How much of a challenge will Iowa State be?

“Challenge. Challenge. Huge challenge. [Audi] Crooks is incredible. She does things and does things extremely well in her way. If we give her two feet in the paint for 80% of her touches, long, long, long, long day. If we can get her to give us two moves on 80% of her moves, I think it favors us.

“But we’re not gonna think it’s just gonna be her. It’s everybody. Emily Ryan is the head of the state, and she is by far, puts the ball where her teammates need to be. [Addy] Brown, another one that, is going to challenge our bigs to keep her in front of us, as well as her ability to stretch the floor out.

“And then they got complimentary players that stretch the floor. We got to pack our D, and then we got, we got to put some points on the scoreboard.”

What was your message to MiLaysia?

“What was my message? Let’s get back at it. It’s not, it’s not anything hard. I don’t know if people want some sort of revelation on… We’re good. She came in here ready to rock and roll yesterday. She practiced well today. I’m good. I got a short memory. We just got to keep it moving.”

She went through struggles early last season

“MiLaysia is a generational talent. Does that mean that she’s not going to go through some things? Yeah, she is. What’s important to me is the trust. She trusts me. I trust her. It is family trust. I don’t have a sound bite to give you about … The only thing I have is we’re all good. It’s our process that we’re going to continue to trust.

“Because it’s not even about UCLA, it’s not about she didn’t play the rest of the game. What it’s about is making sure that her name, her picture is up (in the rafters) and she’s in the league for as long as she wants to be in the league. That’s our process, and sometimes that process forces you to be uncomfortable. But then you address things, and you move forward.”

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