Everything Dawn Staley said to preview the UCLA game

South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley met with the media following practice on Friday. Here’s what she said ahead of Sunday’s top-five game at UCLA.

Q: Number one versus number five. You sign up for these matches but was there a little bit of extra anticipation in practice?

Staley: Yeah, I mean, there’s a there’s a lot of focus. So they’re ready. You think they’re ready. (There’s) one more prep day, but they’re ready.

Q: UCLA has Lauren Betts, kind of a taste of what y’all have been dishing out the past few years. How do you plan to defend her?

Staley: Lot of ways, with a lot of different bigs, lot of different bodies, lot of different abilities. I would imagine that it’s just gonna be a tough game for us all. She poses a different challenge than even with Kamilla. It’s a little bit different. Kamilla could roam out on the outside and go in. Betts is really good when she gets two feet in paint. So we’ve got to try our best to not give her those kind of looks. We just need to knock off her efficiency rate. 79% (shooting) probably at 22 field goal attempts is not good math. She’s that effective.

Q: Does UCLA look about the same as what you saw when you played him twice two years ago or style-wise are they any different?

Staley: Cori is close to where her teams are. Very physical. Great rebounding team. They got a big that – like Lauren is a separator for what they bring to the table, good guard play. They just play well as a collective. They’re big. They just do all the little things, all the intangible things that they take care of. So for us, we gotta be who we are. We gotta fly around out there a little bit. Our guards got to come to play. Our bigs got to come to play on both sides of the basketball. We feel like we got to we got a good game plan together, and hopefully, we can execute it.

Q: In this stretch where things ramp up for you guys, what do you really want to improve out of this team? What have you seen in these past few games that needed work on and that you think can get better?

Staley: I just want us to play a little bit more fluid offensively, more efficient. We don’t take very good shots, and our shooting percentage reflects that. So we got to take better shots. We got to take momentum shots. We are giving momentum away with the type of shots that we’re taking to our opponent. They’re getting out in transition, and it’s too hard. This shouldn’t be that hard to score baskets. So we’re just working through that. There’s a lot of opportunity for everybody, because Kamilla is gone. The opportunities that she had, they’re just wide open now, and everybody feels like they want them all. But it’s learning, like, it’s cool. I don’t like it, but I like the process of learning and growing and figuring it out, and then have our players look a lot better than they’re looking individually and then collectively as a team. 

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Q: How easy is it to say take better shots and explain what better shots are?

Staley: For us, a good shot is in rhythm. That’s one. Two: rebounding position. (If) we got people down there rebounding, give us a shot to get an offensive rebound. And then, whoever has a hot hand, let’s keep feeding them. But if you’re open two times down, they’re not guarding you. You’re gonna be open for the entire possession. So let it run a little bit and it comes back, lock load, and shoot that thing.

Q: We talked after Clemson just kind of about not necessarily playing as free as they did last year. Are you seeing them productively channel that pressure?

Staley: Well, they feel no pressure. That’s the thing. They feel no pressure. What I mean by that is they play too free, like carefree. We’re like, no, no. You see this big target on our backs. You don’t have to play to the target, but you’ve got to play – there’s a certain level of focus that’s needed to go in and out of games. This is an easy one to focus on. It’s easy. I don’t want to be a team that have to turn it on and off. Let’s just focus, take care of business, and then, you know, let the results be what it is. But we can’t fluctuate on who we’re playing as to how focused we are.

Q: Is everyone healthy for Sunday?

Staley: Everyone’s healthy, yes.

Q: Against Clemson, we saw Paopao really fired up when things were going well. She really said, I’m gonna get the ball and I’m gonna make something happen. How huge is it to have an experienced player like that?

Staley: Huge. Experience is everything in our game. Everything. We can rely on Pao to do that. We don’t want to rely on anybody else but somebody that’s been around the block time and time again. We put the ball in her hands. We simplified the offense and just allowed her to take advantage of what the defense was giving us. I thought she just opened the game up for us. We wanted more of our guards to take advantage of what she was doing. Couldn’t quite do it, but we’re getting better. We got their attention, so we’re getting better.

Q: Geno Auriemma set the all-time wins record. Before that, Tara VanDerveer held the record. That’s got to say something about, you know, the quality of coaching for women’s basketball.

Staley: They’re servants of our game, like,  great servants of our game. You don’t stick around our game for 40 years and not have an impact. He’s had an impact on the collegiate level. He has impact in the WNBA, and so does Chris Daley. They both have been in it a really long time, and I tip my hat to them, because they’re probably going to be the only ones that stay as long as they stayed in our game. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving couple of coaches for just being mainstays. They’ve seen our game, they’ve impacted the growth of our game, and they continue to do so. They’ve been the standard in our game for a very long time, and he should be the winningest coach in our game. 

Q: You’re not going to break that record one day?

Staley: I will never break I might break the record to getting out.

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