South Carolina women’s basketball head coach Dawn Staley spoke with local media ahead of the Gamecocks road trip to LSU.

Here is everything she had to say.

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Not the first time you’ve faced a former player, but just what scout-wise stands out about MiLaysia Fulwiley this year?

“I mean, she’s pretty similar to what she’s been doing. She’s great in transition. Can hit the three, can get to the basket. I do think she’s putting a little bit more heat on the ball handler. Just looking like a junior when things start to come together for them.”

Are Maddy McDaniel and Agot Makeer going to be good to go?

“Yes and no. How about that?” (Staley means check the SEC availability report tomorrow ahead of tip-off.)

Obviously, with LSU, everyone knows kind of about their three-headed dragon at the top, but they have a lot of talent that goes kind of deep into their roster. Who are some of the players you think some people may be sleeping on with that roster?

“I just think LSU collectively is a really good team that’s really talented. They got all the spots covered, and they got depth. So that is kind of what you want, you know, when you’re building a team, is to have, you know, great stars, great role players, and great depth.”

How important is the battle in the paint, and the performance of your post players going to be in this game?

“Huge. Huge. Like always. I do think what we’ve been able to do is control the paint for the most part, and that serves true for this particular game when it comes to controlling the boards because those are paint points. Controlling transition is a key. And then for us defensively controlling the way, they just seem to always get the ball in their spots to be effective, whether that’s ducking in or whether that’s behind defenses for ducks. So, I mean, we’re going to be challenged in that area, but you know, as much as we give up just in the paint, we probably have to triple what we have to produce in the paint on the offensive end.”

Coach, defensively, this is the highest-scoring team you played all season by a pretty notable margin. How doyou approach a team that’s scoring at such an insane rate?

“I mean, it’s all a transition game. If you’re able to control the amount of easy opportunities that they get in transition, you can make it a game. If they control the amount of easy opportunities we get in transition and they’re able to play their game, it’s going to be a long night for us. So something really has to give in that area in order for any team to win this game.”

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I don’t want to misquote you here, but I feel like after the Oklahoma game, you talked about sometimes in road environments, you lose your habits, things like that. How big is the mental aspect, and how much are you kind of putting weight in the preparation?

“Oh, it’s all it all comes down to that. If you have mental breakdowns, you’re going to lose basketball games. You have to have far less mental breakdowns than your opponent. And that’s your discipline. That really is what it comes down to. And I would say probably 95, 90 percent of the time that we’ve had it, and do I think Oklahoma was an anomaly when you look at the entire season? You can look at it like that because we haven’t really we haven’t really played like that. And we haven’t played like that, and then we lose either. So, um, I think it’s a familiarity that we hold true to our hearts because that’s something that we don’t want to go back down that path and lose sight of what’s in front of us.”

Going off of that, a pair of 43-point wins. Is there any talk about keeping the team grounded, knowing every game won’t be a 43-point victory?

“No, I mean we have no idea, you know. I mean, I’m in a guessing game. I thought that the game would be a lot closer than what it was, but momentum is a crazy thing. It can work for you, and it can work against you. And for us, I just hope we can actually hope we’re able to produce the momentum that we need to play at a high level when there’s very little um stretches of us having lapses.”

Coach, LSU announced earlier this weekthat the game was sold out. The game is on ABC in prime time. Just what can you speak about the impact of women’s basketball continuing to grow, and how proud you are of that?

“Well, for this particular game, I’m not really surprised. This is what happens, you know, in both places. I think we’ve got to figure out how we get this done across the country continuously. So I think this game is exemplary of what can become of women’s basketball.”

“And I know it’s the SEC. I know it’s, you know, all the things. You got a former player going against her old team. You got all of those narratives that’s a part of it. But when it’s all said and done, it’s going to come down to who is locking step with their discipline and who can do that the longest. They’re at home, so they should have some comfort in that. We’re on the road, and we have an understanding ofwhat that looks like and sounds like and feels like because some of the players have played in that environment two years ago. It’s going to come down to probably not even the Xs and Os of the game. It’s all the intangible things. It’s the mental part of it. It’s the loose balls. It’s who can go get a rebound when they absolutely need to go get a rebound in those moments.”

Consistently why this is always such a good game is obviously the product that you and Kim Mulkey put out on the floor. Is there a particular aspect of the Kim Mulkey coaching style that you sort of consistently see, maybe admire, something that you always recognize with her teams?

“They get up to play. They’re very uh disciplined to how they want to play, and that’s pretty good. When you know that your team is going to do certain things out there on the floor, it gives yourself a chance to win. I mean, all the type teams in the country play with a level of discipline, a level of knowing when you go into the game, you can count on your team to do these things. They can count on transition. They can count on rebounding the basketball, and theycan count on ball screen execution. Those are the three things that really jump off the page when itcomes to a team like LSU.”

You may have addressed this, but playing a former player of yours. You’ve had circumstances like that before. When that happens, does it make the game a little different for you and kind of see, ‘Okay, I remember when she was with us and now she’s with them.’ How does that work?

“No. I mean, they’re just a part of the personnel of the other team now. Do we want to win? Absolutely. I don’t, I mean, I don’t want to win because it’s MiLaysia Fulwiley. I want to win because we got a chance to win the SEC. We got a chance to hopefully keep a number one seed on Selection Sunday night. So, it’s all of those things. The MiLaysia dynamic, I mean, that’s the narrative that’s created, you know, to drum up the publicity for the game. For us, it’s not. She was she was treated as Mikaylah Williams. She was treated as Falu’jae Johnson. You know, going down the line, we’re not putting anything extra. We’re not going to do anything to her that is outside the norm. We going to play the game.

Do you see anything differentin the way she is being used by LSU versus the way she was used here?

“No. I mean, there’s a lot of similarities to what they’re doing. I think the bottom line with it all, people want to win. Like coaches want to win. We’re paid to win basketball games and we’re paid to improve our players. So that’s ultimately, if MiLaysia is improving, that’s great for MiLaysia. That’s what I want every single player, whether they’re mine or someone else’s, is to improve because when they improve, the overall game improves. And I’m all for advancing women’s basketball.”