South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley has turned her program into one of the powerhouse teams in women’s college basketball. This is evident, given that the Gamecocks have won three of the last 10 national championships. They have also won almost 90% of both the SEC regular season championships and the conference tournament titles in the last decade.
Amid South Carolina’s dominance, Staley once shared her personal diary on Andscape, wherein writer Sean Hurd compiled all of the coach’s anecdotes from the 2020-21 season and published them in March 2021, just days after Staley and the Gamecocks won the SEC tournament title.
In one instance, the now 55-year-old Staley shared what exactly is the mentality that she instills into her players, which has made them such a strong program in women’s basketball, dominating both the conference and the national college scenes. She believes nice people can never win championships.
“In our games before the start of the SEC tournament, we just didn’t have the hunger. We were very passive in our approach to games, and I think that was just from us having to always take somebody’s best punch at the start of a game. I do think at times they are just relaxed. They’re in this place of, ‘OK, let me see what they have.’ I think our players approach it that way at times,” Staley had written.
Stealey went on to recall an instance when she was doubling down on her Gamecocks, instilling this mentality into the whole team. She mentioned asking the players at the beginning of the campaign if nice people can win championships. When all of them said ‘Yes,’ Staley said ‘Okay,’ although she believed otherwise.
“Then we had to give them constant reminders that nice people can’t win championships,” Staley added. If you’re in a nice mindset, you get taken advantage of. And I know people took advantage of us at times throughout the season, especially in big games,” she concluded.
Dawn Staley and South Carolina Gamecocks Have Won Two off the Last Five NCAA Titles
After the 2020-21 season, before which they had only the 2017 national title to their name, Dawn Staley and the South Carolina Gamecocks won both the 2022 and the 2024 NCAA titles.
They did this by notching wins over the UConn Huskies and the Iowa Hawkeyes in 2022 and 2024, respectively, which now gives the program a total of three NCAA titles. They head into the 2025-26 season with the hope of winning national title No. 4.
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