Dawn Staley Delivers Powerful Response to Disappointing South Carolina Update

In an exciting development for South Carolina basketball, Dawn Staley and the Gamecocks are once again heading to the NCAA Tournament after the bracket was revealed on Sunday night. This marks the team’s pursuit of a second-consecutive national championship and a fifth-straight Final Four appearance.

South Carolina earned the No. 1 seed in the Birmingham 2 region after finishing the regular season with a stellar 30-3 record and dominating the SEC Tournament. However, the selection committee named UCLA (30-2) the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, a decision that has sparked some controversy.

The decision may have been influenced by the Gamecocks’ loss to the Bruins in November, where UCLA handed South Carolina their first defeat of the season with a decisive 77-62 victory. Despite this, Dawn Staley expressed her frustration with the committee’s decision shortly after the full bracket was released.

“I mean, obviously, it’s disappointing,” Staley remarked. “It really is. To get some feedback on how they came to that conclusion because we put together and manufactured a schedule that, if done right, it should produce the overall No. 1 seed. But I will say this: we are going to make adjustments to our schedule in the future… If that’s the standard, then we can play any schedule and get the No. 1 seed.”

Despite South Carolina’s tough competition, facing 15 top-25 teams this season compared to UCLA’s 12, the selection committee did take into account the strength of the Big Ten, which had a record 12 teams selected into the tournament field, compared to the SEC’s 10.

Looking ahead, the Gamecocks will begin their tournament run against No. 16 seed Tennessee Tech on Friday at 4:00 p.m. ET in Columbia, S.C.