“Now that I’ve been through it? Now that we’re on the other side?… I thought it was great,” the South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley remarked after she had bagged the Championship title last year. Staley didn’t get the chance to touch the woodenware during her playing days but has three NCAA D1 titles to her name as a coach. Hence, while gearing up for a consecutive title this year, the 54-year-old herself feels that she will have to face major challenges if she wants to cut the nets once again.

On Friday’s episode of GamecockCentral Takeover, Staley shared one major impediment to her title quest that can ruin things for them.

“It’s hard. I don’t think cohesively, our second unit is doing it for us. Like this particular team, they’re not… I mean there’s a drop off in energy, there’s a drop off in chemistry. So we got to figure out how ’cause they probably all deserve the start and they all probably would play better starting,” Staley stated.

Staley has brought back almost the same team except for her center Kamilla Cardoso. A 6-ft-7 post player who made it a challenge for the opponents to get into the paint and score. Nonetheless, according to the 3x NCAA winning coach, the team is struggling to build up that chemistry. Though they have found a good talent in Joyce Edwards, it remains to be seen how she will perform once the season starts. As of now, stat-wise, the team is doing averagely well.

“But it’s hard to break up the guard trio. Chloe has been just outstanding like it’s hard, and then Feagin is our… you know Feagin has improved as well, and she’s our player with the most experience on his team as far as post play. I think everybody else, Joyce could probably play anywhere. Maryam is still trying to get her footing, but she adds a different element to what we have. So the only question is post play and Feagin won the job. Like she did what she needed to do, she lost some weight. She’s focused. She still has to get off to better starts for us as well. So it’s almost the same team we’re bringing back. There’s a big void in Kamilla being gone,” Staley concluded.

The Gamecocks have played two exhibition games and won both. They played the first game against Memphis, winning by a 106-63 margin. Repeating the result, they emerged victorious in another matchup against Clayton State by a 126-42 tally. However, for Staley, this isn’t perfect as she feels nostalgic when mentioning Cardoso.

The Brazilian talent was one of the main reasons that the Gamecocks lifted the title last year. She averaged 14.4 points with 9.7 rebounds per game and was later drafted by the Chicago Sky as the third overall pick. Therefore, according to Staley, they are missing the energy brought on by the 23-year-old in the game. Meanwhile, the Hall of Famer had felt quite similar last year too.

Dawn Staley did not like the Championship winning team initially

“I don’t think they were hard workers at first… I felt like they were destroying our legacy,” Staley had enumerated on the initial impression of the last year’s batch. The Pennsylvania-born was dissatisfied with her players at first, expounding that they didn’t seem serious.

Sometimes, they would not respond to her text, at others, they’d reach practice late by 5 minutes whereas while practicing too they would keep chit-chatting. All this made her feel that the team wasn’t well prepared to face the difficulties of the season. Furthermore, they had lost some of their main stars.

The Gamecocks, before the 2023-24 season, lost Aliyah Boston, Zia Cooke, and Brea Beal to the W. It was this team that had won the Championship title in the 2021-22. Therefore, comparing that class with the 2023-24 team presented these stark differences. However, last year’s class couldn’t be defeated as they had a 38-0 tally, which left Staley in tears when they lifted the title.

And now, the situation is somewhat the same once again. The Gamecocks have won a title and lost a key player if not many, and to Staley, it feels like the team is not made for it. But one should always remember what she said after the previous roster stunned her “Now that I’ve been through it? Now that we’re on the other side?… I thought it was great.”