WBB coverage delivered straight to your inbox<\/a>!<\/p>\nI don\u2019t 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?<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, it\u2019s all it all comes down to that. If you have mental breakdowns, you\u2019re going to lose basketball games. You have to have far less mental breakdowns than your opponent. And that\u2019s your discipline. That really is what it comes down to. And I would say probably 95, 90 percent of the time that we\u2019ve 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\u2019t really we haven\u2019t really played like that. And we haven\u2019t played like that, and then we lose either. So, um, I think it\u2019s a familiarity that we hold true to our hearts because that\u2019s something that we don\u2019t want to go back down that path and lose sight of what\u2019s in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Going off of that, a pair of 43-point wins. Is there any talk about keeping the team grounded, knowing every game won\u2019t be a 43-point victory?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I mean we have no idea, you know. I mean, I\u2019m 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\u2019re able to produce the momentum that we need to play at a high level when there\u2019s very little um stretches of us having lapses.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s basketball continuing to grow, and how proud you are of that?<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, for this particular game, I\u2019m not really surprised. This is what happens, you know, in both places. I think we\u2019ve 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\u2019s basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I know it\u2019s the SEC. I know it\u2019s, you know, all the things. You got a former player going against her old team. You got all of those narratives that\u2019s a part of it. But when it\u2019s all said and done, it\u2019s going to come down to who is locking step with their discipline and who can do that the longest. They\u2019re at home, so they should have some comfort in that. We\u2019re 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\u2019s going to come down to probably not even the Xs and Os of the game. It\u2019s all the intangible things. It\u2019s the mental part of it. It\u2019s the loose balls. It\u2019s who can go get a rebound when they absolutely need to go get a rebound in those moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
\u201cThey get up to play. They\u2019re very uh disciplined to how they want to play, and that\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
You may have addressed this, but playing a former player of yours. You\u2019ve had circumstances like that before. When that happens, does it make the game a little different for you and kind of see, \u2018Okay, I remember when she was with us and now she\u2019s with them.\u2019 How does that work? <\/p>\n
\u201cNo. I mean, they\u2019re just a part of the personnel of the other team now. Do we want to win? Absolutely. I don\u2019t, I mean, I don\u2019t want to win because it\u2019s 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\u2019s all of those things. The MiLaysia dynamic, I mean, that\u2019s the narrative that\u2019s created, you know, to drum up the publicity for the game. For us, it\u2019s not. She was she was treated as Mikaylah Williams. She was treated as Falu\u2019jae Johnson. You know, going down the line, we\u2019re not putting anything extra. We\u2019re not going to do anything to her that is outside the norm. We going to play the game.<\/p>\n
Do you see anything differentin the way she is being used by LSU versus the way she was used here?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. I mean, there\u2019s a lot of similarities to what they\u2019re doing. I think the bottom line with it all, people want to win. Like coaches want to win. We\u2019re paid to win basketball games and we\u2019re paid to improve our players. So that\u2019s ultimately, if MiLaysia is improving, that\u2019s great for MiLaysia. That\u2019s what I want every single player, whether they\u2019re mine or someone else\u2019s, is to improve because when they improve, the overall game improves. And I\u2019m all for advancing women\u2019s basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Carolina women\u2019s basketball head coach Dawn Staley spoke with local media ahead of the Gamecocks road trip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,465],"class_list":{"0":"post-601938","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-womens-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116066554564477463","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}