South Carolina was the team to beat the last two seasons, but the hype has dissipated entering 2023-24 as the Gamecocks failed to defend their national title and lost multiple key players. Dawn Staley, however, doesn’t care about hype.
“I don’t care about other people’s expectations of our team,” said Staley, who’s beginning her 16th season as the Gamecocks’ coach. “I don’t care about other people’s views of our team. We had the best team in the nation last year, so yeah, they had to talk about us. Now they don’t deem us as the top team in the country. They probably don’t have to talk about us so it really doesn’t matter to me. I couldn’t care less about it.”
Although the Gamecocks didn’t win a second consecutive national title last season, they still made it to the Final Four and put up a valiant effort against Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes. However, South Carolina’s chances at making that deep of a run again don’t look as promising, at least on paper.
South Carolina lost what Staley described as “one of the most historic classes in the history of the program” to the WNBA. That group included Laeticia Amihere, Zia Cooke, Victaria Saxton and two-time Naismith Defensive Player of the Year Aliyah…
