Following South Carolina’s 95-44 win over East Carolina, South Carolina’s women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley spoke with the media. Here’s everything she had to say.
How was Chloe Kitts was being guarded by ECU
“I think that Chloe has to make adjustments because, right now, I think she’s our leading scorer. So, she’s got the target on her back as far as the scouting report. I think once she sees how they are guarding her after that first possession, she probably needs to just kind of make them forget about it a little bit and then come back. Sometimes, it does a defense good to think that you’re not gonna be as aggressive as you’ve been, especially when you miss. I think she missed two layups at the beginning of the game. I think she started pressing a little bit. She’ll adjust. I’m not worried about Chloe.”
Sania Feagin and players producing on offense
“Yeah, the more we’re able to be aggressive and score the ball in multiple positions, the better we’re gonna be as the team. I think overall, if we just make layups, we missed a lot of layups, just layups. I think when we miss those type of shots, we have a tendency to press just to see one go in. By then, we miss 10 more.
“So, it’s a really young team. They’re experienced, but they’re playing different positions, especially our bigs are playing a different position or a different role. Sometimes, it’s gonna take more than four games or five games or 10 games to settle in. If I’m a big on this team, I probably don’t know when I’m gonna play, but if I play well, I know I can see extra minutes, so that’s just the way it is.
“But I thought Sakima came in and did her job. I mean, she sat for 34 minutes, and she finished it and she finished it well, so you know, we’re just trying to figure out how to get the ones that are at the end of the bench — Adhel and Sakima and Maryam — just getting them game experience. So, we’re not starting from scratch and we actually need them to perform.
“Well, I didn’t answer your question. Yes, we need Feagin to play the way she’s playing. She’s gotta be solid. She’s gotta be great defensively. She’s gotta be solid offensively. And she’s gotta just be active. Her activity, her experience, Feagin knows what to do, whether or not she’s gonna do it any given day, it’s gonna be on her.”
Line changes throughout the game
“Were y’all asleep? Because I was falling asleep with that first group. It’s hard. It just wasn’t working out.
“It wasn’t working out. The energy wasn’t there, the effort wasn’t there, they [ECU] were controlling the tempo of the game and we just played the same way. Like yo-yo the ball across. Sometimes, you got to put it on the floor and go beat it. Just go change the energy and the building. So, I don’t know if it was any better. I think the second time when our starters went out there, it was a little bit better.”
Trying to find the right combinations but good depth early on in the season
“Yeah, we’re talented. There’s no doubt about it, we’re talented. It’s how we figure out what group works well together, and we’re struggling with it. We’re not playing bad, but we’re struggling with combinations. So we’ll just continue to try to find it on any given day. It could move from game to game.
“We certainly need more from Ash. I think Maryam is getting better with more time; she’s getting better. Adhel needs more time. She really needs more time just to knock the rust off. But we don’t have a lot of time. If she’s not playing well, we’ve got to get somebody else in there. She knows the ropes. Everybody knows the ropes. If you’re playing well, we’re probably gonna play you extended minutes; if you’re not, you gotta need somebody else in.”
Emotional conversations with Bree Hall about WNBA pressure as a veteran
“The (conversations) are just like, ‘You’re pressing,’ You get straight to the point, like, ‘Relax, you gotta take the shots.’ You gotta take the shots that you take in practice without getting sped up. If you’re taking your normal catch-and-shoot shot, she’s good. She’s more than efficient. But she gets sped up and starts shooting faster. All the motions are faster. She’s not very efficient. It’s simple.
“The shots that she took today were perfect shots for her. She was 2-for-4. If she could be 2-for-4 for the rest of the season, increases her chances of being a pro, increases her stock. She just plays like she plays today, which was great on both sides of the basketball. I think she’ll get a lot more confident and a lot less pressing in situations that don’t really call for her to press because the shot clock is good. She’s playing with floor spacers. She’s going to have the space to do some things out there. She just has to exhale.”
On games getting lopsided and how that affects the game plan
“It’s a perfect time for us to make sure our habits are being played out. It is a really hard time for the mistake in the habits, because the score is so lopsided, I’m only looking at habits. I’m only looking at that. Obviously, we’re gonna win the game. So we’re looking at, ‘Okay, we got Clemson on Wednesday, we got UCLA after that,’ who can actually do what we need them to do if the game is tight?’ They know we’re evaluating from that standpoint because that’s what we talk about. So it is who can do it, who can’t do it, and we have to evaluate in those instances because it builds great habits or not.”
On learning the Philadelphia Eagles won while coaching
“I mean, I was relieved. I can just coach and not have my mind occupied.”
Communication from different line combinations
“This team is a tight team. There’s not very many instances where there’s no communication. It could be miscommunication. I just want us to play a little more fluid offensively. Defensively, I think we’re getting better. We’re getting better. I know we had some lapses, but there were some people playing the type of post defense we needed to play. And if they didn’t, they made the adjustment, so that’s always a good sign. We just need more time together. And we need more games. We’re practicing, and we’re doing a pretty good job in practice, but when you make the transition to game day and all the external things that are happening, it makes you lose your concentration, makes you do some things that you wouldn’t do in practice. So, it’s that, we’ve just gotta get tighter as a team.”
On the early turnovers
“We’re constantly talking about getting off to quicker starts. You could do that on both sides of the basketball. You can pressure for turnovers or you get out in transition offense and push and create advantages and scores. I thought we got off to a good start, and then it was like 7-0 for a long time, and our defense was good, but our offense is stagnant. So we got to put it out. We should probably been up by at least 20 at that point with the type of shots that we were getting. But the layups kill us. They kill us. Layups kill us and we miss multiple layups. I don’t need to keep bringing this up, but Kamilla was a 60% shooter, probably higher than that with layups, so we’re missing that. We’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out.“
