Womens NCAA championship south carolina daybreak staley win third championship

CLEVELAND — Wearing a Louis Vuitton metallic-silver jacket, South Carolina coach Daybreak Staley had a golden afternoon in Cleveland, and was moved to tears after an emotional group hug together with her crew and gamers. After a troublesome finish to final season, the Gamecocks had an ideal 38-0 end on Sunday.

“They weren’t going to be denied,” Staley stated as confetti fell round her on the conclusion of the Gamecocks’ 87-75 nationwide championship victory over Iowa. “It does not at all times finish such as you need it to finish. I am simply tremendous happy with the place I work. It is unbelievable.

The second was a stark distinction to a yr in the past, when one other excellent South Carolina season got here to a crashing halt as Iowa — sure, the identical crew the Gamecocks beat Sunday — upended them in Dallas within the nationwide semifinals.

“It’s important to let younger folks be who they’re,” Staley stated. “However you additionally should information and navigate them. They made historical past. They etched their names within the historical past books.”

That South Carolina crew was a fair heavier favourite, with former nationwide participant of the yr and future No. 1 WNBA draft decide Aliyah Boston and 4 different senior starters. After the devastating loss, Staley advised her crew within the locker room how a lot she appreciated them.

“And people of us who have been graduating, we went across the room and have been speaking to every of the returning gamers,” Boston stated. “Simply to say, ‘We all know you guys acquired this subsequent yr.’

“And now right here we’re.”

This yr, in what may be Staley’s greatest efficiency on the sideline, she was named nationwide coach of the yr not simply because her crew went unbeaten — the tenth girls’s crew to take action within the NCAA period — however how she did it. South Carolina is the primary crew up to now 25 seasons to succeed in the Closing 4, not to mention go undefeated, with out returning any starters.

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South Carolina wins nationwide championship to finish excellent season

South Carolina outlasts Iowa to win its third nationwide championship and full its 38-0 excellent season.

Staley’s Gamecocks are 74-1 over the previous two seasons regardless of two fully totally different beginning lineups. In in the present day’s switch portal world, Staley satisfied gamers to stay with the method, ready their flip for larger roles — and introduced in a single key piece in level guard Te-Hina Paopao.

The flexibility to multitask with a watch on the long run was key to the success, Boston stated. Whereas Staley was guiding a veteran squad to close perfection in 2022-23, she was additionally growing the youthful expertise on that crew to be prepared for his or her second.

“It is her potential to do each,” Boston stated. “Final yr, the starters knew what we wished to do. The second string, who are actually starters, would are available [to practice] and work simply as exhausting.

“Coach Staley by no means prioritized one group versus the opposite. If we did issues proper, we did it proper. If we did not, she would appropriate us. And similar for the subs. In the event that they did not get it proper, they’d keep on the courtroom till they did.”

A’ja Wilson, who has gained two WNBA titles and MVP awards with the Las Vegas Aces, performed at South Carolina from 2014-18 and gained the 2017 NCAA title. She stated Staley has maintained her excessive requirements whereas additionally altering with the instances, adapting to the portal and NIL period.

“She’s much more jokey,” Wilson stated. “I believe she sort of needs to be with this era, with NIL. After I was at school we could not have telephones [the night before games]. However now they should as a result of that is their job, their model. So you possibly can see her loosen up a bit of bit as a result of that is how she will be able to connect with her gamers. However that is Coach Staley. She’s going to discover a manner.”

Staley is now in an elite group of Division I girls’s basketball coaches with three or extra NCAA titles. UConn’s Geno Auriemma has 11, the late Pat Summitt of Tennessee eight, LSU’s Kim Mulkey 4 and Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer three.

Auriemma, whose Huskies misplaced to Iowa in Friday’s nationwide semifinals, has led UConn to 23 Closing 4 appearances, and has reached the ultimate weekend of the season yearly however one since 2008. UConn has gained 11 nationwide championships, the newest in 2016. Staley has gained all three of her NCAA titles since then.

“She’s an incredible recruiter, large motivator, an incredible instance,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder stated. “For some time it was Pat, then it was Geno. And now it is Daybreak setting the bar for everybody else.”

However it wasn’t at all times simple for Staley this season, Boston stated.

“She talks a lot about how she did not assume they have been going to be this good,” Boston stated. “They confused her out on a regular basis.”

Earlier this season on “School GameDay,” Staley stated she thought-about early retirement over the summer season. It might need been a bit of hyperbole, however falling brief final season took time to recover from.

Boston, Zia Cooke, Victaria Saxton, Brea Beal and Kierra Fletcher completed their faculty careers, as did multipurpose reserve Laeticia Amihere. All however Fletcher have been taken within the 2023 WNBA draft.

The core of that group was 32-1 and ranked No. 1 going into the 2020 NCAA match that was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Then within the 2021 Closing 4 semifinals, the Gamecocks misplaced 66-65 to Stanford, with then-sophomore Boston’s putback try on the buzzer rimming out. They gained the nationwide championship in 2022, beating UConn within the closing. Then have been upset by Iowa 77-73 within the 2023 semifinals.

It was a profitable four-year interval, with a nationwide championship and three SEC match titles. However not placing that closing bow on greatness with an NCAA title final yr drove Staley this season. And now she has a 3rd nationwide championship.

Staley had replicas of the 2017 nationwide championship trophy — this system’s first title — made and gave them to everybody who had been part of her journey, together with all of her former teammates at Virginia, which she led to a few Closing 4 appearances as a participant. And he or she has constructed a household in Columbia since taking on South Carolina in 2008.

“We come again to practices, we discuss to the gamers,” Boston stated. “It is simply the household facet of taking part in for South Carolina. And this yr, you possibly can see their maturity stage come via.”

The Gamecocks will lose beginning middle Kamilla Cardoso from this season’s crew, as she is headed to the WNBA draft April 15. However most of this crew will return, and South Carolina is anticipated to be within the hunt for an additional title in 2025.