MINNEAPOLIS — Daybreak Staley was shedding.
Staley, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and Corridor of Famer as a participant, had coached at Temple, in her hometown, Philadelphia, for eight years, however the staff couldn’t get past the primary weekend of the N.C.A.A. match.
So when Staley took over as coach of South Carolina’s ladies’s basketball staff in 2008, she had one aim on her thoughts: “I wished to win,” Staley mentioned Saturday. “I wished to win the nationwide championship.”
Beneath Staley, the Gamecocks have made 10 consecutive N.C.A.A. tournaments, earned 4 journeys to the Closing 4 and, after Sunday night time, received two nationwide championships. This has been a sluggish burn for Staley, who rebuilt South Carolina’s program from the bottom up. That Sunday’s win was in opposition to Connecticut, essentially the most embellished ladies’s basketball program, suggests a altering of the guard within the sport.
Staley constructed a powerhouse staff led by Aliyah Boston, who received awards as the highest participant and defender. Beginning guards Zia Cooke, Brea Beal and Destanni Henderson, Staley mentioned, have “logged loads of minutes collectively,” and consequently they play like “shorthand writing.”
“You don’t should say a lot,” Staley mentioned. “You’ll be able to simply level, they usually know the swap.”
Her rosters have proved themselves again and again. Staley has led the Gamecocks to their solely No. 1 rankings in program historical past and despatched eight Gamecocks to the W.N.B.A draft, together with the No. 1 general choose in 2018, A’ja Wilson, who helped carry dwelling the Gamecocks’ first nationwide title in 2017.
On Sunday night time, Wilson was readily available rooting for her alma mater.
UConn, led by Coach Geno Auriemma, laid the groundwork for a lot of that success, Staley mentioned. Auriemma has received 11 championships at UConn, the place he has been in cost since 1985.
“Whether or not individuals imagine that or not, he has helped our recreation develop tremendously,” Staley mentioned. “I believe loads of what we’re in a position to do and get is off the backs of their success. I believe the individuals up at UConn deal with their ladies’s basketball staff as a sport. They’re compelled to due to all of the successful and all of the success, however you could possibly take a web page out of their ebook.”
Going into the championship recreation, neither coach had misplaced a nationwide championship recreation. Then Staley defeated Auriemma.
“I advised Daybreak after the sport, they had been one of the best staff within the nation all 12 months,” Auriemma mentioned Sunday night time.
Whereas South Carolina is pushing individuals to assume past UConn because the gold normal in ladies’s school basketball, Staley hesitated to name her program a dynasty. However she acknowledged the enjoying subject was altering.
“What I believe is vital as a Black lady and coach is the best way you do it, like the instance that you simply set for different coaches to comply with,” Staley mentioned after Sunday’s recreation.
“I simply wish to be an amazing instance of how one can do issues the precise method and preserve our recreation in a spot the place the integrity is unbroken, as a result of that’s the best way we’ll develop,” she added.
Whereas South Carolina’s two titles might look like child steps in comparison with UConn’s 11 championships, the game is not dominated by one staff. This season has proven how ladies’s basketball is in a really totally different period, with a wealth of expertise is unfold throughout the nation evinced, partially, in six double-digit seeded groups making the spherical of 16.
South Carolina is a member of the Southeastern Convention, which is understood primarily for soccer. Staley, by her success, has drawn rather more consideration to ladies’s basketball at her college. She has positioned herself because the highest-paid Black lady teaching a staff and cultivated a loyal fan base that has led the nation in attendance for girls’s school basketball for seven straight seasons.
“When she first obtained right here, it wasn’t all rainbows and stuff,” Beal, a junior guard, mentioned forward of Sunday’s recreation. “I believe, simply wanting again on that and the way she constructed an amazing neighborhood, an amazing place, I believe simply having our personal legacy and constructing that for us was key.”
Candace Parker of the W.N.B.A.’s Chicago Sky mentioned South Carolina is carving out its personal path.
“I’d say the following U.S.C. is the following U.S.C., I believe everyone seems to be chasing who they wish to be, their very own id,” Parker mentioned after Sunday’s recreation. “I believe they’re who they’re they usually’re doing what they’re meant to be.”
If Boston has her method, Sunday night time’s win is only the start.
“I believe over the previous couple years you’ve simply been in a position to see this program and the way it simply continues to develop,” Boston mentioned, including that extra gamers will wish to go to South Carolina due to “the environment that we have now right here.”
Supply: NY Times