PHOENIX — When Chloe Kitts hit the floor in practice last October and the ACL gave way, Raven Johnson stood there doing the math in her head — and the numbers did not add up.
“Is this team gonna be the same? Like, she’s a big key to this team,” Johnson remembers thinking.
Six months later, South Carolina is in the Final Four for the sixth consecutive year, having outscored four NCAA Tournament opponents by 161 points — the largest point differential in SEC tournament history. Johnson had her answer. It just took the entire season to arrive.
“Everybody just stayed together and trusted Coach’s process,” Johnson said. “It’s been a long run, we deserve this.”
The Season That Tested Everything
What Staley navigated this year was not a minor inconvenience. Six of twelve players missed time due to injury or illness. Eight different starting lineups. A roster that was functionally rebuilt in real time while competing in the most talent-rich conference in women’s college basketball.
For context: in four of South Carolina’s previous five Final Four runs, Staley used two or three different starting lineups across the entire season. This year she used eight. The depth of the disruption was genuinely unprecedented for a program operating at this level — and yet the Gamecocks are here, in Phoenix, averaging 87.1 points per game, which would break the program’s own record of 85.4 set during the 2023-24 national championship season.
The SEC itself offered no shelter. Staley’s path included a rising Vanderbilt program, a talent-loaded Texas team, star-studded LSU featuring former Gamecock MiLaysia Fulwiley, a seasoned Kentucky roster, and an Oklahoma squad built around the 2025 number one recruit. Oklahoma was the only program to beat the Gamecocks in the regular season. South Carolina got its revenge with a Sweet 16 victory over the Sooners.
The SEC Tournament loss to Texas that seemingly cost the Gamecocks the number three overall seed has, in retrospect, looked like a clarifying moment. Since that defeat, this team has locked in completely.
Where Staley Stands in History
The championship race among coaches is a conversation that tends to generate more heat than light, but the numbers deserve honest examination.
Geno Auriemma has twelve national championships at UConn. Pat Summitt won eight at Tennessee before her death in 2016. Kim Mulkey sits alone in third with four — three from Baylor and one from LSU in 2023. Dawn Staley and the late Tara VanDerveer are tied at three.
A fourth championship would move Staley into sole possession of third place all-time, ahead of Mulkey. It would tie Summitt’s total of four titles within a ten-season span. It would make her the only active coach besides Mulkey and Auriemma to have won more than once — a distinction that underscores just how concentrated championship-level coaching has become in the modern era. The last time anyone else won a title was Brenda Frese with Maryland in 2006.
Staley, at 55, is also doing this with an urgency and consistency that the historical record rewards. She could claim her third title in five seasons. Summitt won three straight; Auriemma won four straight. Staley’s pace is extraordinary by any reasonable measure.
“She’s two wins away from her fourth title.”
The Bracket Picture
This is only the fifth time in NCAA Tournament history that all four number one seeds have reached the Final Four — and the storylines on both sides of the bracket could not be more distinct.
On one side, Staley faces Auriemma in a matchup that has defined women’s basketball for the better part of a decade. Auriemma holds a 10-5 all-time edge over Staley, but the recent history between them is far more competitive, and last year’s championship game — a rematch of which is now set for Friday night — was the first time Staley has lost a national title game.
On the other side, UCLA’s Cori Close and Texas’s Vic Schaefer are both chasing their first championships. Schaefer made his own history simply by arriving in Phoenix — he became the first coach to reach the Final Four multiple times with multiple schools, having done it twice with Mississippi State and now twice with Texas.
Staley’s record of six consecutive Final Fours is the second-longest active streak in the sport, behind only Auriemma’s remarkable run of fourteen straight from 2008 to 2022. She has built something in Columbia that now exists on a plane occupied by very few coaches across the entire history of women’s basketball.
The Championship Table
| Coach | School | Titles |
|---|---|---|
| Geno Auriemma | UConn | 12 |
| Pat Summitt | Tennessee | 8 |
| Kim Mulkey | Baylor/LSU | 4 |
| Dawn Staley | South Carolina | 3 |
| Tara VanDerveer | Stanford | 3 |
| Linda Sharp | Southern Cal | 2 |
| Muffet McGraw | Notre Dame | 2 |
The Gamecocks and Huskies tip off Friday at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN. For Staley, it is a chance at redemption after last year’s title game loss — the only blemish on an otherwise perfect championship record. For the sport, it is the latest chapter in the greatest coaching rivalry women’s basketball has ever produced.
Two wins. That is all that stands between Dawn Staley and history.
