South Carolina coach Dawn Staley’s No. 3 Gamecocks lost their first game of the season against the No. 2 Texas Longhorns last week. The top-ranked clash was a repeat of last season’s SEC championship game and one of the Final Four matchups of the NCAA Tournament. Staley turned heads among both fans and analysts during her postgame news conference last week when she revealed that the loss to Texas did not worry her.
Dawn Staley Details Errors That Her Team Needs To Fix After Texas Loss
Next, the Gamecocks will face the No. 22 Louisville Cardinals on Thursday as they seek to bounce back from the loss to the Longhorns. During her press conference before the game against Louisville, Staley detailed the aspects of the game that her team needed to work on after the loss to Texas last week.
“Free throws, free throw box outs. Inability to take away someone’s strength. I thought we did a good job; their top three scorers were inefficient. They just had key buckets at crucial times of the game,” Staley said. “The fouling really put us back on our heels, but it’s not anything for us to be like, ‘The sky is falling.'”
“Because it’s a one-possession game. Our team is still trying to find itself. This isn’t a team that we’ve had for years. Our defense has to get better. Just defensive breakdowns. All stuff that you can point to and can’t be upset at. It wasn’t effort. It was just execution of what we need, which for us is a norm, but isn’t a norm for this team.”
After the game against the Cardinals, the Gamecocks have five non-conference matchups remaining on their slate before tipping off SEC conference play on Jan. 1 against the Alabama Crimson Tide at Colonial Life Arena.
Staley’s team lost a lot of experience from last season’s roster, with three former Gamecocks being drafted during the 2025 WNBA Draft, while talented guard, MiLaysia Fulwiley, departed for the LSU Tigers via the transfer portal. In addition, South Carolina lost star forward Chloe Kitts to a season-ending ACL injury, and Ashlyn Watkins took the year off, leaving Staley’s team light on experience.
Staley further revealed how her young bench was coping with being thrust into several ranked games at such an early stage in their careers and the lessons they were learning during those games.
“Probably that it’s hard, that it looks a lot easier than it really is,” Staley said. “And then, for us, we got to grow, got to develop our bench. I mean, we can’t go a whole season playing six or seven (players); we got to be able to get to eight or nine comfortably. And the only way that you’re going to do that is put them out there.”
Despite their rebuilt roster, the Gamecocks will once again be fancied to compete for both the SEC regular season and tournament titles and the national championship titles.