Dawn Staley says South Carolina is playing its ‘best basketball’ heading into SEC Tournament

South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said her team is playing some of its “best basketball” of the season heading into the SEC Tournament. The reigning national champion Gamecocks are the No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament after winning a coin flip over Texas for that spot, and are once again a contender to win it all.

The Gamecocks will begin their SEC Tournament journey Friday in the quarterfinals against Vanderbilt, who beat Tennessee in the second round Thursday. Staley joined SEC Network during halftime of the Vanderbilt-Tennessee matchup to discuss her team’s status.

“We’re playing some of our best basketball now,” Staley said. “And it’s several players, like we have a core group of players that just have been playing well. Now, I think we’re hitting our stride. It takes a little bit of a setback to do that. The team that I have this year, we couldn’t keep winning at the pace that we were winning or else we would lose in the end. We’ve had to have some bad habit games to show them that you can’t win this way, not against top teams. We’ve learned from them.

“I think now is their most comfortable time of the year and hopefully they can play their best basketball and hopefully that leads us to a place that we’ve been just a few months ago.”

South Carolina went 27-3 this season and is ranked No. 5 in the country, but by its recent standards that was a somewhat disappointing campaign. The Gamecocks’ three defeats were their most since 2021, and they saw a number of historic winning streaks come to an end this season.

Women’s NCAA conference tournaments: Stanford’s historic NCAA Tournament streak among three key storylines
Jack Maloney
Women’s NCAA conference tournaments: Stanford’s historic NCAA Tournament streak among three key storylines
Their 43-game winning streak, which lasted over an entire calendar year and included a perfect 2023-24 season, ended in a defeat to UCLA on Nov. 24. Later, their 57-game SEC winning streak, which dated back to 2021, came to an end with a defeat to Texas on Feb. 9. Finally, their 71-game home winning streak, which was the fourth longest in Division I history, was snapped with a loss to UConn on Feb. 16.

Since that defeat to the Huskies, though, the Gamecocks have been on fire. They won their final four regular-season games by an average of 24 points, and gave up more than 60 points just once in that stretch. The Gamecocks will hope they can carry that momentum into the SEC Tournament and beyond.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *