Dawn Staley coached the South Carolina Gamecocks through a great season. Although they fell to Iowa State during the Final Four, Coach Staley is not letting anything shake her team. 

During a recent press conference, Staley called out the media for creating false narratives about the players. 

There were allegations the former champions were overly aggressive while on the court. 

ESPN reported the stats from Friday’s game.

The Gamecocks and the Hawkeyes gave their all from both sides of the court. South Carolina received calls for 20 fouls during the matchup. The outlet shared this was the “third time the team was called out for 20 or more fouls in a regulation game in the 2022-2023 season.” They would go on to lose to Iowa, 77-73.

During the after-game press, a journalist asked Staley if the “narrative around her team’s physicality” possibly worked against them.

Staley called for a heightened sensitivity to avoid negative stereotypes when discussing Black players and their behavior on the court.

“I do think with all the talk of how we play and the physical nature in which we play and the description of our team; I do think it plays a part.” The WNBA Hall of Famer chose her words carefully as she continued. “People got to do what they got to do to win. We’ve won a lot of basketball games doing it this way. We’ll win a lot more; we’re not changing.”

Staley agreed with another reporter who stated spewing rhetoric like that was damaging, especially to Black players.

She mentioned that “sports is a microcosm of our society,” implying the negative backlash is possibly one of the “hurdles you just can’t cross.”

In a separate conference, Staley addressed other NCAA coaches’ harmful comments toward her team.

Awful Announcing mentioned that before the game, Iowa’s coach, Lisa Bluder, claimed someone told her trying to rebound against the Gamecocks was like “going to a bar fight.” The University of Connecticut’s head coach Geno Auriemma also voiced issues with the Gamecocks’ playing style. “It’s not basketball anymore. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not basketball.”

Staley gave the truth about her team. “We’re not bar fighters. We’re not thugs. We’re not monkeys. We’re not street fighters,” she said.

She acknowledged her team approaches basketball as they should approach basketball but didn’t name her coaching peers who made her team out to be “bullies.”

She also addressed the media, which has carried the negativity during the season, possibly causing fans and officials to look at her team with a bias.

Awful Announcing shared her dialogue with the reporters.

“Some of the people in the media, when you’re gathering in public, you’re saying things about our team, and you’re being heard, and it’s being brought back to me,” the coach said.

She continued, “And these are the people that write nationally for our sport. So you can not like our team, and you can not like me. But when you say things that you probably should be saying in your home on the phone or texting out in public, and you’re being heard, and you are a national writer for our sport ⁠— it just confirms what we already know. So watch what you say when you’re in public, and you’re talking about my team in particular.”

She added the media should consider their possible microaggressions or racist comments could affect the young players.

Staley added if there was a genuine desire to get to know her players, as the media seemed to want to know other players, they shouldn’t “judge them by the color of their skin.”

She ended her statement by doubling down on the fact that she and her team were unshakeable and not changing.

“You may not like how we play the game,” she said. You may not like it, but that’s the way we play. That’s the way I coach. I’m not changing. We found success in it, and maybe some days, like today, we end up on the losing side of the stick. But guess what? We live to see another day. We live to see the comeback next year and try to do this again because I’m not changing.”

Dawn StaleyNCAA