South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley had a lot to celebrate on her 54th birthday May 4. In nearly 25 years of coaching collegiate basketball Staley has earned three national titles in seven years and catapulted the Gamecocks from a middle-of-the-pack SEC team to a national powerhouse program for women’s basketball.
For Staley’s former players, her contributions were necessary for the Gamecocks program and women’s basketball.
“Coach Staley has never changed in the years that I’ve known her, and I don’t see her changing at all,” Las Vegas Aces center A’ja Wilson said. “That’s what I love about her and I think that’s what women’s basketball needs is just someone that is literally a true honest GOAT. [I go so hard for Coach Staley] because no one wants her here. No one believed she could get to his point and she’s sitting here shining. I think that is why she’s such a trailblazer for women’s basketball.”
She spent nearly a decade at Temple University building up her coaching résumé and seven more years building relationships with players, recruiting players from South Carolina, and getting players to buy into her system. Staley is reaping the rewards — national championships, Final Four appearances, No. 1 rankings, top-ranked recruiting classes, and increased game attendance in Columbia, South Carolina.
In the three years before Staley took over the program in 2008, the Gamecocks were at the bottom half of the SEC standings. South Carolina hadn’t finished top 5 in the SEC standings since the 2002-03 season and the highest program ranking in the 21st century was when the Gamecocks tied for second in 2001-02 and made it to the Elite Eight.
When Staley took over the South Carolina women’s basketball program, former players and hometown products Wilson, guards Asia Dozier, and Khadijah Sessions, recall spectators could walk in at any point in pregame and get close to a courtside seat at most of the home games.
“I remember it being the school that not a lot of SEC teams wanted to come to play because it was either a blowout or the crowd sucked,” Wilson said of her memories of South Carolina growing up. “It was so quiet. You could hear shoe squeaks, you could hear the play calls, you could talk to people from across the sections [and] I feel like they could hear your conversations. It was just very empty.
“I would only go to a women’s game when Pat Summitt would go coach because you’re like, ‘when am I gonna see Pat Summitt again?’ You went there when big dogs were in town, not necessarily to support the women’s team.”
Allen University coach Olivia Gaines remembers Staley mentioning winning champions and that’s what sealed the deal on her commitment. Former Gamecocks player Markeshia Grant, currently a personal development coach who works with South Carolina, said it was playing a game of spades with Staley and a vision of what the program could become that sold her on joining the early era of Staley’s program.
“Her mindset is that she wanted to win a national championship because she didn’t do it as a player even though she got the opportunity several times. She just never won it,” Grant said. “So that was her mindset coaching, and her mindset when she recruited us, like, ‘Hey, you may not be the team that wins the national championship, but you will be the team to help us win the national championship.’ So I was all for it.”
The first few years of Staley’s tenure were marked by gradual improvements in recruiting and increasing her program’s win totals. The team reached its first Sweet 16 under her in 2012.
When buildi
ng up her roster, Staley used yearly team mottos based on what she believed each team could accomplish. Announcing a yearly theme has continued to set the program up for success. The Gamecocks’ theme of “Love” set the tone for South Carolina’s undefeated season and their 87-75 victory over Iowa in the national championship game April 7.
“I just feel like it evolves with where the program is at the moment,” Grant said. “We went from ‘We Rise’ to ‘We Believe’ to ‘The Time is Now. [The themes] are so simple, but so powerful. The past themes have always been like ‘Now,’ thought-provoking or really powerful in terms of the concept and the detail that went in [and] the planning that went in behind it. Last year, the team motto was ‘Dreams, Nets and Assets’ or ‘DNA.’ ”
“This year, Coach Staley said ‘Love’ [and] I recall her saying nothing beats love and I’m like ‘You’re right. Nothing does beat love.’ Hate can’t beat love. Racism can’t beat love. Winning with love, means winning with grace. It means winning despite everything that you face in terms of adversity. … That was this team.”
Players never questioned Staley’s basketball IQ and her ability to break down the fundamentals of the game to teach her players X’s and O’s. Even though some believe she hasn’t been publicly acknowledged for her knowledge of the game, most of her players believe the relationship she builds with her players sets her apart from other coaches.
“She builds relationships with her kids and that was really, really important for me, because I needed her,” Gaines said. “She was in my corner. She never made me feel like I was alone, and she told me it would be tough, but fighting through adversity is gonna make you stronger.
“She checks all the boxes of being a good coach. X’s and O’s are very important. I think she does a good job with it, but I also like the relationships that she builds with people. She is probably the most humble person. It is nothing for Coach [Lisa] Boyer or anybody to draw up a play because she believes in her staff, but Coach Staley has drawn up stuff to win basketball games as well. Sometimes it goes under the radar, which is fine, but it kind of speaks for itself. She’s won several SEC championships. She’s won three national championships now. She can do it. She’s done it. She’s winning.”
Dozier described Staley as a tough coach who demanded discipline and sacrifice, and that she always gave the team honesty and love in return. Dozier, who was an assistant coach for North Carolina A&T last season, recalled how Staley’s jovial antics with the team – from doing the popular dunk challenge from several years ago during a summer camp to her latest Beyoncé appreciation post – embody the person and coach the Hall of Famer is.
“It’s the balance with the players,” Dozier said. “I laugh because I used to crack jokes with Coach Staley all the time. I felt like she did a good job of keeping us level, always taking the game seriously [but] not too serious to the point where it wasn’t fun for us. She’d be chewing you out one second and then the next minute she’s like giving you a wet willy.”
Sessions, who is now an assistant coach on South Carolina’s coaching staff, remembers the early grind of learning under Staley before the program attracted some of the nation’s top recruits.
“She was tough, man. She’s from Philly. She gave it to us, but that kind of molded her program and that’s why she has the success and the players that she has now,” Sessions said.
“We never had the top players here. We just started getting top players really after A’ja Wilson.
“We weren’t the No. 1 in the country. We weren’t No. 2, [or] No. 3. We were just four-star kids coming together believing in each other, believing in Coach Staley’s system and sticking to it.”
Connecticut Sun guard Tiffany Mitchell grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, an hour and a half away from Columbia, South Carolina. She saw the promise in the program and committed in her junior year of high school in 2011.
“You’re gonna have to work your way if you’re going to play,” Mitchell said. “You’re going to work for everything. Nothing is given to you once you leave high school, but being the person and player that I am, I love the challenge.”
Wilson committed in 2014. Indiana Fever center Aliyah Boston followed with her commitment in 2018. Now, the Gamecocks roster bolsters talented rising sophomore MiLaysia Fulwiley and rising junior Ashlyn Watkins while adding top talent, five-star incoming freshman Joyce Edwards, who won co-MVP honors at the 2024 McDonald’s All American game in April.
“I really just went to South Carolina because it’s never been done here before,” Wilson said. “They got an amazing coach who’s done everything that I want to do. Why not? I feel like that was the biggest turning point, a young girl decided to stay home and build around a program that was up-and-coming, and then the rest is history.”
“I always say Coach Staley could be anywhere in the United States and I probably would have gone to be coached by her. But it just kind of was a blessing that she was at South Carolina, and I was from there.”
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