MINNEAPOLIS — Daybreak Staley was dropping.
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 workforce 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 workforce in 2008, she had one aim on her thoughts: “I wished to win,” Staley stated 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 evening, gained two nationwide championships. This has been a gradual 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 workforce led by Aliyah Boston, who gained awards as the highest participant and defender. Beginning guards Zia Cooke, Brea Beal and Destanni Henderson, Staley stated, have “logged quite a lot of minutes collectively,” and because of this they play like “shorthand writing.”
“You don’t should say a lot,” Staley stated. “You may simply level, they usually know the change.”
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 deliver residence the Gamecocks’ first nationwide title in 2017.
On Sunday evening, 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 stated. Auriemma has gained 11 championships at UConn, the place he has been in cost since 1985.
“Whether or not folks imagine that or not, he has helped our recreation develop tremendously,” Staley stated. “I believe quite a lot of what we’re in a position to do and get is off the backs of their success. I believe the folks up at UConn deal with their ladies’s basketball workforce as a sport. They’re compelled to due to all of the successful and all of the success, however you possibly can take a web page out of their e-book.”
Going into the championship recreation, neither coach had misplaced a nationwide championship recreation. Then Staley defeated Auriemma.
“I informed Daybreak after the sport, they had been the very best workforce within the nation all 12 months,” Auriemma stated Sunday evening.
Whereas South Carolina is pushing folks to assume past UConn because the gold customary in ladies’s school basketball, Staley hesitated to name her program a dynasty. However she acknowledged the taking part in discipline was altering.
“What I believe is necessary as a Black lady and coach is the best way you do it, like the instance that you just set for different coaches to observe,” Staley stated after Sunday’s recreation.
“I simply need to be an awesome instance of the right way to do issues the correct approach and preserve our recreation in a spot the place the integrity is undamaged, as a result of that’s the best way we’ll develop,” she added.
Whereas South Carolina’s two titles might seem to be child steps in comparison with UConn’s 11 championships, the game is not dominated by one workforce. 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 way more consideration to ladies’s basketball at her college. She has positioned herself because the highest-paid Black lady teaching a workforce 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 bought right here, it wasn’t all rainbows and stuff,” Beal, a junior guard, stated forward of Sunday’s recreation. “I believe, simply trying again on that and the way she constructed an awesome group, an awesome 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 stated 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 need to be, their very own identification,” Parker stated 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 approach, Sunday evening’s win is just 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 stated, including that extra gamers will need to go to South Carolina due to “the ambiance that we have now right here.”
