Philadelphia’s Dawn Staley cements her status as a coaching legend with her Third National Championship and an unbeaten record. She is the first African-American college basketball coach to have led her team to an unbeaten season.
ABOVE PHOTO: South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley cuts down the net after the Final Four college basketball championship game against Iowa in the women’s NCAA Tournament, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Cleveland. South Carolina won 87-75. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
By Chris Murray
For the Philadelphia Sunday SUN
Shortly after Coach Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks defeated the Iowa Hawkeyes for the Women’s NCAA basketball national championship, you saw a rare moment of unabashed emotion from the former Murrell Dobbins Tech star.
Last year, Staley coached another unbeaten squad to a Final Four loss to that same Iowa team. That Gamecocks squad was a great team that had all five of its starters get drafted into the WNBA in 2023.
For the 2023-24 season, Staley had to start fresh with a new group of talented players who didn’t know how to play with each other. Anyone who knows anything about coaching basketball at the high school or collegiate level will tell you that it’s hard to get young players to gel in one year.
No one in their right mind thought that this squad with four freshmen and one senior transfer student would end the season as an unbeaten national champion. I doubt if anyone thought this team would win the Southeastern Conference.
With tears streaming from her eyes after her team’s 87-75 win over Iowa, the normally stoic and poker-faced Staley reflected on last year’s loss in the national semifinals and rejoicing in the glow of an undefeated championship season. In her emotional interview with ESPN’s Holly Rowe, Staley paid tribute to her group of young players that pulled together and had the season for the ages.
In the game itself, it was a team effort by the Gamecocks talented group of young players to slow down All-American and Wooden Player of the Year Caitlin Clark, who scored 18 points in the first quarter to lead Iowa to a double-digit lead.
But after that first quarter, sophomore guard Raven Johnson relentlessly hounded Clark on defense and held her to just 12 points for the rest of the game. Meanwhile, freshman Tessa Johnson scored 19 points. Six-foot-seven senior transfer Kamilla Cardoso scored 17 points and owned the boards with 19 rebounds.
Not bad for a team that lacked limited playing experience coming into the season.
“You have to let young people be who they are, but you also have to guide them and help them navigate through this tough, tough, world, but when young people lock in and have a belief and have a trust and their parents have that same trust, this is what can happen. They made history. They etched their names in the history book,” Staley told ESPN. “This is the unlikeliest group to do it.”
Staley is not wrong about her team pulling off a remarkable unbeaten, national championship season.
Think about this. John Calipari tried it with one-and-done freshman players for 15 years during his time at the University of Kentucky, went to four Final Fours and won just one national championship.
Going unbeaten at 38-0 and winning a national championship with a group of freshmen and sophomores with limited playing experience and just one senior is an amazing feat and is the best coaching effort of Staley’s career. It is arguably the best coaching effort of any college basketball coach’s career men or women.
Staley is the first African American basketball coach, men’s or women’s, to lead a team to an unbeaten season. She is the second African American woman head coach to win a national championship after former Purdue coach and ESPN analyst Carolyn Peck. She led the Boilermakers to the 1999 championship.
Equally as important is that Staley, who is already in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, has put herself in elite company as a college basketball coach with her three national championships. Only Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma (11), Tennessee’s Pat Summit (8), LSU’s Kim Mulkey (4), and recently retired Stanford coach Tara Vanderveer (3).
That’s truly an elite list of women’s college basketball coaches. The irony of Staley winning these championships as a coach was that as a successful basketball at the collegiate and professional level during the 1990s and early 2000s, Staley said during the midst of her playing career that she had no intention of coaching at any level.
But then in 2000, Temple athletic director Dave O’Brien was looking to improve a women’s program that didn’t have a winning season in 10 years. In an interview with the SEC Network in 2021, Staley told O’Brien that she had no interest in coaching.
“I got bamboozled into coaching, because I never wanted to be a coach,” Staley said in an interview on the SEC Network show, “Marty and McGhee.”
Then O’Brien, who thought Staley’s Philadelphia roots would be an advantage for Temple University, apparently awakened her competitive spirit and got her to sign the dotted line at a university not far from 25th and Diamond where she grew up playing with local Philly legends like Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble.
“He asked me two questions. Can you lead? And then asked me, ‘Can you turn our women’s basketball program around?’ I’m drawn to challenges. He startled me with that question,” Staley recalled in her interview on the SEC Network. “I didn’t want a job …I’m flattered. I came to let you down easy. I don’t want to do this. But two weeks later, I took the job and I never looked … This is what I’m supposed to be doing.”
A few blocks away from Dobbins Tech where she dazzled North Philadelphia’s basketball fans with her scoring and ball-handling, Staley transformed the Temple women’s basketball program from also-ran status to a powerhouse in the Atlantic-10 Conference.
Under Staley’s tutelage, the Owls women’s team won the Atlantic 10 Conference Tournament four times and made six trips to the NCAA Tournament. What made this feat even more remarkable for Staley was that she did it while she was still an active player in the WNBA.
In her eight years at Temple, Staley developed players like former Temple star and All A-10 forward Candice Dupree into outstanding pro player in the WNBA. She built toughness in her players by having them practice against a Temple’s men’s team coached by the legendary head coach John Chaney.
Coming back home to turn the Temple women’s team into a winner around set the foundation for Staley’s success at South Carolina and in the process, she truly found out that coaching indeed is her calling.
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