The University of South Carolina’s board of trustees approved a contract extension for women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley on Friday that will make her the highest-paid coach in women’s college basketball.
The extension keeps Staley in Columbia through the 2029-30 season with an annual base salary of $4 million per year. Previously, she was the third-highest-paid coach in the country — behind LSU’s Kim Mulkey and UConn’s Geno Auriemma — at $3.1 million per year in base. With a signing bonus and annual increases, the total contract is worth more than $25 million.
Staley has been at South Carolina since 2008, taking over a program that was a near-perennial basement dweller in the SEC and turning the Gamecocks into one of the best programs in women’s college basketball. South Carolina won its first conference title under Staley in 2014 and the program’s first national title in 2017. The Gamecocks won titles again in 2022 and 2024, with the latter marking just the 10th time in women’s basketball history that a team capped an undefeated season with a national championship.
The Gamecocks are currently ranked No. 2 in the AP poll behind UCLA, the only team to whom South Carolina has lost this season. The team returned all but one of its players from its national…
