Dawn Staley SPEAKS on Why Back-to-Back Title Losses Haven’t Rattled Her Ahead of 2027
Despite South Carolina’s back-to-back championship losses, Dawn Staley says she isn’t feeling extra pressure heading into the 2026-27 season — even with a roster she’s assembled that includes five players who can dunk. Staley made the comments on an episode of The Bakari Sellers Show that aired August 20, when Sellers, a longtime Gamecocks fan, asked directly whether two straight finals losses had changed how she approaches this year.
“No I don’t,” Staley said. “I really don’t. Every season, I come into the season with who this team is, I know we are talented … but dunking doesn’t mean you’re going to win, right?” She elaborated on her broader philosophy toward outside expectations, adding, “I’ve been around the block long enough to not get ahead of things. It’s really not about what I want to accomplish, it’s everything about what the players say out of their mouths. We can say, ‘It’s win a national championship or bust.’ I could say that and that’s added pressure.”
The stakes of the coming season are real regardless of Staley’s mindset. South Carolina has reached four of the last five national championship games, including three straight trips under Staley, capped by an undefeated title run in 2024. But the two seasons since have ended in blowout losses — 82-59 to UConn in 2025, then 79-51 to UCLA in 2026. The Gamecocks open this season November 2 against Maryland in Paris, facing a brutal non-conference slate that includes at least eight ESPN preseason top-25 teams, four of them in the top 10.
Staley’s plan for navigating that gauntlet is deliberate rather than urgent. “We’re going to ease our way into it, we’re going to figure out what the identity of this team is going to be and that’s the cool thing about it,” she said. “I don’t want to put any pressure on our players in June and July, I want them to get the understanding of how we need to play.” With summer sessions having started June 22 and official preseason practice not beginning until late September under NCAA rules, Staley said her focus right now is more foundational: “I am going to stress some things about sharing the basketball and how we have to do this as a collective.”
Asked specifically about the UCLA loss, Staley offered a candid breakdown of what went wrong — pointing first to fatigue after South Carolina’s Final Four win over defending champion UConn. “I thought one, we were mentally drained from beating UConn, I could see it, I could see it in our preparation,” she said. But she also credited UCLA’s own trajectory, describing a Bruins group she’d watched mature since first facing them as freshmen in 2022-23. “They just had it,” Staley said. “It was like the Knicks. You could see it no matter how large of a lead the Spurs got, they just kept chipping away and they were destined. For UCLA it was destiny, it happened the way it was suppose to happen.” She noted UCLA’s six seniors, playing under a coach in Cori Close who hadn’t yet won a title, fed into a “now or never” urgency that ultimately proved decisive.
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