COLUMBIA, S.C. — Just some weeks earlier than South Carolina started its marketing campaign to defend its nationwide title, fifth-year senior Te-Hina Paopao laughed and joked with teammates on the sideline throughout observe as coach Daybreak Staley stood close by and rattled off suggestions to gamers conducting a full-court drill.
Staley both didn’t discover or didn’t thoughts Paopao that October Monday (however provided that it’s Staley, it’s truthful to imagine it’s not the previous). A yr in the past, Staley would’ve characterised it as Paopao’s being unfocused. The fixed chatter would have felt like disrespect to the sport and that she was permitting distractions to enter this sacred area. However at the moment, Staley doesn’t see it that method in any respect. As an alternative, she understands it as a obligatory piece of what this staff wants and extra importantly, how she wanted to regulate for her gamers. It’s now a part of how they win video games, even when it wasn’t how she received video games previously.
That skill to adapt is perhaps Staley’s biggest asset because the No. 1 Gamecocks, who’re on a 40-game profitable streak, return most of final season’s roster and embark on a season through which they might turn out to be the primary program to repeat as nationwide champions since UConn received 4 straight from 2013 to 2016.
Daybreak Staley after @GamecockWBB’s win over NC State:
“That’s why we put the schedule collectively the best way that we did b/c we wanna problem ourselves. It might find yourself in a loss someplace down the road or two, however we’re working in the direction of taking part in in March & April in November & December.” pic.twitter.com/javEiTvTun
— Matt Dowell (@MattDowellTV) November 10, 2024
Staley has set the bar excessive at South Carolina. Time and time once more, she has requested gamers to step outdoors their consolation zones. However final yr, she had to try this too … even when she fought it first. A yr in the past at the moment, when her gamers wouldn’t cease chattering, she’d seemed to the north finish of the fitness center the place huge banners cling representing South Carolina’s first-round WNBA Draft picks. She’d keep in mind what it had been like to teach these gamers who helped Staley mildew this system into the gold customary and he or she’d worry, is that this staff going to tear down the whole lot we constructed?
However then? That staff completed one thing none of these gamers on the wall ever did — went undefeated and received a nationwide title. In the middle of that run, final season’s staff additionally taught the Corridor of Fame coach an surprising lesson: Even in her mid-50s, after she’s received virtually the whole lot, there may be nonetheless much more to study.
“This recreation will stretch you out. It gives you what you want,” Staley says. “In some uncanny method, I’ve all the time gotten one thing I wanted on the time I wanted it.”
When she was a participant, successes and losses usually strengthened Staley’s concept of what it meant to respect the sport — to be targeted, to take away distractions. When she was minimize from the 1992 Olympic staff, the crushing defeat fueled her drive to return in 1996 (and an extra two Olympics after that). When she began as a coach at Temple in 2000, she was nonetheless taking part in within the WNBA, and the sport allowed her to learn to stability herself and see the sport in a different way.
When South Carolina — then an SEC backside dweller — employed Staley in 2008, she got here in with an depth and expectation that the gamers would have the identical drive and chips on their shoulders as she did. However they didn’t. Throughout Staley’s first preseason in Columbia, affiliate head coach Lisa Boyer pulled Staley apart to inform her that every one the gamers may hear was her quantity, not her phrases.
If Staley needed to get via to them, she wanted to pivot. She didn’t must decrease her requirements, however she wanted to alter her strategy.
The sport gave her an opportunity to evolve. And she or he did. South Carolina, which had been to the Candy 16 simply twice in its historical past, received its first nationwide title 9 seasons after Staley took over.
Final season, Boyer reminded her of that pivot 15 years earlier and made her think about that the sport maybe was giving her an opportunity to do it once more, to stretch herself as a coach. This time, it wasn’t about altering how she communicated however permitting gamers to speak the best way they wanted to, to cede floor in a method she by no means had earlier than to get this group to go additional than she ever had earlier than. Staley, who describes herself as an old-school coach who likes issues to be outlined strictly as proper or improper, instantly realized she wanted to step into the grey space so South Carolina may attain its full potential.
“She modified her teaching,” Paopao says. “She needed to get issues throughout rapidly earlier than we began dropping consideration. We had been good for like six to eight minutes … . And she or he is aware of that. She is aware of our consideration span is small.”
Staley picked her battles. She allowed the speaking, singing and joking as long as gamers had been extra disciplined in each different method on and off the courtroom. Once they had been late to staff occasions or missed lessons, she enforced day without work from basketball. They weren’t allowed within the fitness center or weight room. Staley referred to as it PTO.
Amid the gamers’ fixed noise, Staley noticed one thing clearly — this staff was changing into one of many closest she had ever had. What she had as soon as seen as a distraction she needed to get rid of was unexpectedly what introduced gamers collectively.
“I benefit from the challenges of the job, I actually do. And I believe I’m fairly good at it. However some stuff, you’ll be able to’t win,” Staley says, referring to her dropping the battle in opposition to her gamers of their chatty silliness.
The hallmark of nice coaches is their skill to adapt through the years. Usually, the main focus is on an evolution on the courtroom or how they modify to new guidelines, not how a coach basically — and rapidly — adapts to their very own gamers.
“They actually can’t assist it. It’s who they’re. So long as we’re getting what we have to get from a aggressive and a observe and core values standpoint, I allow them to be who they’re,” Staley says. “That’s why I coach — to permit our gamers to get to who they’re so much faster of their life. … Who am I to place my conventional outlook on life and basketball on them? To place them in a field they don’t slot in?”
It’s with this view {that a} stretched and pivoted Staley has returned for her twenty fifth season on the sideline. The Gamecocks stay largely the identical personality-wise even when their play seems to be a bit completely different now with out 6-foot-7 Kamilla Cardoso, who’s within the WNBA, however they’ve already clocked wins over Michigan and top-15 NC State.
This yr feels completely different for Staley even when the roster and the outcomes have been largely the identical. South Carolina retains profitable, and the chatter in observe remains to be there. Paopao says they’re “not as unhealthy” as they had been final season however she will be able to’t be fairly certain. Possibly it’s simply that Staley isn’t preventing them on it as a lot, she wonders.
This yr, Staley wouldn’t dream of doing that.
“My coronary heart is all the time with younger folks and wanting them to develop and study, nevertheless it’s a problem,” she says. “I wanted (the lesson) for the pure sake of them letting us know, ‘It’s cool, we’ve acquired you. We’ve acquired you however we’re going to be us.’ That was refreshing.”
(Picture: Jacob Kupferman / Getty Photos)
