With South Carolina’s national title win, Dawn Staley has cemented herself as one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time, in the middle of what’s becoming a South Carolina dynasty.
Over the past eight seasons, Staley has led the Gamecocks to five Final Fours and three national championships (2017, 2022, 2024). Staley’s Gamecocks have also won eight SEC tournaments and eight regular season conference titles since she took over in 2008.
On Sunday, her team capped off a 38-0 season, becoming the first team to go undefeated since UConn in 2016. They’re just the 10th team in women’s college basketball history to do so.
They did it in front of a women’s basketball record viewership of 18.7 million, which peaked at 24 million viewers on ABC. It’s the most-watched basketball game on the network since 2019.
“I think it just cements her greatness in this time where there is so much parity in the game,” Seattle Storm assistant coach and former LSU coach Pokey Chatman told Andscape. “The rules literally have changed in the game. She’s been able to maintain the highest level of basketball – retainability, respectability, everything in between.”
What makes the feat even…
