Dawn Staley’s NCAA championship is a triumph beyond basketball

MINNEAPOLIS — All season long, South Carolina carried an air of dominance, almost to the point of inevitability.

The Gamecocks were the No. 1 team in the nation from start to finish, 27-1 in the regular season before losing the SEC Tournament final by one basket — just as their only other loss was by that margin.

But Dawn Staley still felt immense pressure to win.

“Pressure because we were the No. 1 team in the country throughout the entire season, pressure to come into the NCAA Tournament and be the favorites — by most people, not all,” the North Philly native said Sunday night after her team won her second national championship, 64-49 over Connecticut.

» READ MORE: Dawn Staley’s South Carolina crushes UConn in the national title game

And that was just the start of it.

“I felt a great deal of pressure to win because I’m a Black coach,” Staley said. “Because if we don’t win, then you bring in so many other …”

She paused for a moment to find the right word.

“Just, scrutiny,” she said, a choice that was accurate but also polite.

“Like, ‘You can’t coach. You had enough to get it done, but yet you failed,’ ” Staley continued. “You feel all of that, and you feel it probably 10 times more than anyone else because we’re at this platform.”

When the final buzzer sounded, the Gamecocks hadn’t just won their, and Staley’s, second national championship. They did it with as emphatic a rout as you’ll ever see one juggernaut deal another.

And their joy was unconfined. Within seconds of the horn, Staley grabbed the trophy and paraded it across the floor to South Carolina’s pep band.

» READ MORE: Dawn Staley and Geno Auriemma faced each other in a national championship game for the first time

A few minutes later — OK, more than a few, with all the celebrating that happened — she climbed the ladder, cut down the net, and did a little dance while standing up there.

All of this, like her team’s talent, was unstoppable.

Staley is the first Black head coach of a Division I basketball program, men’s or women’s, to win two national championships. That will resonate deeply across the sport, and it started doing so right away.

“The things that she’s done to the state, it’s so much bigger than basketball,” said former South Carolina star A’ja Wilson, who grew up in the state and led the Gamecocks’ 2017 title winners. She now plays for the Las Vegas Aces, and like Staley is an Olympic gold medalist.

“She deserves it more than anything, being a Black woman in this industry of college basketball,” Wilson said. “I love her to death.”

» READ MORE: Aliyah Boston and Paige Bueckers brought true star power to the championship game

An even bigger star, Candace Parker, was at the front of the stands and got a shout-out from South Carolina’s current phenom, Aliyah Boston, during the trophy ceremony. Parker returned the favor with a gesture from afar, and the two women embraced on the court later — the first time they’ve met in person.

Parker has a longstanding relationship with Staley, including as a player on the 2008 U.S. Olympic team for which Staley was an assistant coach.

“She’s a player’s coach,” said Parker, an eternal champion with Tennessee (whisper that part for now) and the Chicago Sky and her country. “She’s a coach that really identifies with what it is to play top-level basketball [as a] point guard. Just an amazing individual — I think everybody was cheering for her, secretly or outwardly.”

And on the subject of representation, Parker went straight to the point.

“It’s huge — being able to see what you want to be matters,” she said.

» READ MORE: NCAA president Mark Emmert is grilled over gender inequity at the women’s Final Four

Boston, who swept the national player of the year trophies and was the Final Four’s most outstanding player, called Staley “like a second mom off of the court. She’s someone that I can always depend on, but on the court she’s a great coach that pushes me to be the best player that she knows I can be.”

Staley loves to use her time at the podium to campaign for other Black coaches, administrators, and even journalists who work tirelessly in women’s basketball without much recognition. Now the favor was being returned to her.

“You know, it really makes me emotional,” she said. “It does, because I am their hope. … I am the person that they strive [to be] — not me, just where I sit, winning national championships, that’s what they want to do.”

That turn of phrase might have caused a little wistfulness among people who watched Staley’s glittering playing career: back-to-back college player of the year awards at Virginia, six WNBA All-Star Games, and most famously, three Olympic gold medals.

But that was all a while ago now. A high school player whom Staley starts recruiting now wasn’t born yet when Staley’s playing career ended in 2006, and Gamecocks senior Destanni Henderson was a toddler when Staley won her last gold in 2004.

» READ MORE: Dawn Staley, Geno Auriemma and Cheryl Reeve keep Philly at the forefront of women’s hoops

At this point, Staley is best known as one of women’s basketball’s all-time coaches more than as one of its all-time players. So it was natural that she looked through that lens, just as aspiring coaches look at her that way.

“If I can be that ray of hope, if I can be a vessel of theirs to them being successful, you know, I am a willing giver of this game, because the game has given me so much,” Staley said. “My cup runneth over when it comes to what the game has given to me, so I am forever in debt in trying to repay the game. I do that with just giving them my time, my expertise, or just my opinion on things, to help advance young coaches of all colors.”

Now she is once again a champion on all those fronts, on and off the court.