Everything Dawn Staley said following South Carolina's win over Mississippi State

South Carolina women’s basketball defeated Mississippi State, 95-68, on Sunday. Following the game, Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley spoke with the media. Here’s everything she had to say.

Question: Dawn, not sure if you know, but any update on Ashlyn?

Staley: No, not at the moment.

Do you know if she had to go to the hospital?

No, she just got a little treatment here.

Rough first quarter, it didn’t seem like the defense could really stay in front of anybody, was there one adjustment that y’all made to fix that going forward?

I mean, we just had to wait until the adrenaline of the beginning of the game. We’re going to get everybody’s best effort in the beginning. Sometimes the game has to settle down, sometimes there’s a substitution here or there, but most times it’s just great crowd, great team. They got off to a great start, and the game settled in and we utilized our depth and our experience in being in games like this to play better basketball.

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You guys went on the big run pretty shortly after Ash went down; what was said in the huddle, what was going on on the bench after you see a teammate go down like that?

I think psychologically, for our players, they took it to another level. We didn’t say anything, and we try not to. We try to just keep things moving. Obviously, we feel for Ashlyn, her injury, and her not being able to finish the game. But the teammates had her back, and they did take it to another level on both ends of the floor.

What did you see from Mississippi State that they were doing well at the start of the game, and what did you feel like your team was able to exploit later on in order to take that big lead?

I think they had a real big emphasis on paint possessions. So they were driving it down our throats. They were sharing the basketball, they were finding who should take the shot, and they were very efficient in doing so. We just really couldn’t get our footing, and sometimes it’s like that when you’re on the road in this league. Big crowd, energy was in the building, and we just had to make some plays and keep the crowd out of it. Get on to playing connective basketball.

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Dawn, I saw Sakima was here, but any update on when she might return or Maddy?

Sakima is doing a little bit more in practice. Maddy, don’t know her status, we’ll know more tomorrow and Tuesday.

Tessa with a big game off the bench, Chloe with her best offensive day in a month, what’d you see from those two to get the rally going, especially in the second quarter run?

Chloe was due. Tessa was due as well. It’s just good to see players you know can play and make an impact on the game, make an impact on the game. After just a long time in between where they had these kind of performances, but truly happy for them. Chloe’s been trying, Chloe works her butt off. And sometimes she doesn’t reap the benefits of her hard work through stats. She got them today, and Tessa was just lights out. Tessa was locked, ready and loaded to shoot the ball when she was open. You know her, her focus goes to another level when we’re down. And she seems to hit big shots when we’re down. So, it was good to see her ball go into the hole.

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Dawn, it seems like Tessa is really kind of becoming that indispensable player, I know you like to have that set lineup and all, but is it a challenge to say “we’ve got our lineup but we’ve got to start getting her more minutes”?

Yeah, we say it all the time, “production needs more minutes”. No matter who it is, production needs more minutes. And obviously we’re set on our starting lineup, we’re not going to change anything, but certainly when Tessa’s shooting as well as she’s doing and defending as well as she is, we’re going to find some more minutes for her because that’s what her production says.

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