South Carolina women\u2019s basketball head coach Dawn Staley spoke to the media after the Gamecocks lost to Texas in the SEC Championship.<\/p>\n
Here is everything she had to say.<\/p>\n
Dawn, I know you don\u2019t like to call them, but when they\u2019re on that run, 8-0, any thought of trying to call a time-out right there?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. If I did, I would have called a time-out. Just let our players play through it a little bit. I don\u2019t usually do it. See if we could gather ourselves and make a play on both sides of the basketball. We couldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
What do you attribute that start to for Texas? Was it more them making plays or y\u2019all making mistakes?<\/p>\n
\u201cA little bit of both. I think they made plays. They forced us to play a certain way. Turning the ball over isn\u2019t something that you can start a game like Texas and give them a head start, give them a 12-point lead. We just \u2014 it didn\u2019t feel right, just from a mental and physical standpoint. You can try to keep pushing through, but every time we would try to make a run, we had just mental lapses, like uncharacteristic turnovers. Some of it was us, some of it was Texas. They took advantage of it every single time, no matter who caused it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I think this is the highest any team has shot against you, percentage-wise, this season. Obviously, some of the turnovers led to that. But felt like Texas was really able to get to the midrange. What stood out to you defensively today that your team didn\u2019t play well enough?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just didn\u2019t play well. I mean, they were moving pretty fast, and we weren\u2019t moving as quickly as they were. When you think about it, maybe there\u2019s a little fatigue. We\u2019ve had depth when we got to this point, played our starters some heavy minutes. So you\u2019ve got to look at that and maybe think that contributed to it. A little mental fatigue, physical fatigue. But when you\u2019re not hitting on all cylinders, like Texas, you\u2019re going to feel it in every category.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dawn, just what was the message to the team afterward to take lessons from this as you regroup and head into the tournament?<\/p>\n
\u201cOur team knows we didn\u2019t play our best basketball. Not nearly what we\u2019re capable of doing. Told them that the last time we lost in this situation, we won a National Championship. So you\u2019ve got to think about that. It might be the very thing this team needs. It\u2019s not what I would think yesterday, coming in today.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut now that we\u2019re here and it\u2019s a reality, you search for things that have a connection that can give your team what it needs to make this run for a National Championship. I do think we have enough in the room to do that. We\u2019ll rest and recoup at the end of the week and start that journey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dawn, I believe the kids are on spring break coming up this week. What is the schedule getting back?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll get back at the end of the week, probably Friday. Practice Friday. Take four days off.\u201d<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve worked Alicia Tournebize into the rotation quite a bit since she got here. 19 minutes off the bench, she had some really solid minutes. What led to her playing time today, and what did you like from her?<\/p>\n
\u201cI told our team I thought we got stronger if we could get Ali to play the way she did. She played
inspired. Not playing yesterday makes her think about the things she needs to do to play. If she can give us that, if she can give us that, she\u2019s got seven rebounds on a great rebounding team like Texas. She held her own defensively. So it was pretty good and promising to know that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe needed scoring. We know Ali can score the basketball. I thought she did a pretty good job. I think we
should probably have gotten her the ball a little bit more in the block and let her go to work. But we made a step forward in our journey to win a National Championship. Somebody like her will add to the depth that we need to make this run.\u201d<\/p>\n
What was the biggest thing that you saw in Madison Booker\u2019s growth this season? She looked comfortable all tournament, really. What did you see from her this whole tournament?<\/p>\n
\u201cShe played like Maddie Booker. She\u2019s a junior. Juniors have it all together. They know where their spots are. They know how to lead. They know everything that has happened to them over the first two years of their career. They know where the pitfalls are, and they avoid them. She\u2019s done extremely well. When her shot is going like that, they are a real difficult team to beat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dawn, sort of a quiet game for Ta\u2019Niya Latson. What do you think Texas was doing to slow her down?<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we were just playing an uphill battle. We had to run some offenses that would give us
multiple looks. I mean, usually, we give her \u2014 we use her a little bit more than we used her. And we expended a lot of energy on defense, so it was hard. And they made it difficult for wing entries.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cSo when it\u2019s like that, it\u2019s a lot of dribble entries, and you have to run your sets from places that, options, that you only created one option, and that was a dribble entry. When it\u2019s like that, your offensive package shrinks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Carolina women\u2019s basketball head coach Dawn Staley spoke to the media after the Gamecocks lost to Texas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,465],"class_list":{"0":"post-648664","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\/116198643323301930","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648664","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=648664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}