In UConn, No. 1 South Carolina has toughest task yet
On a Friday afternoon soon after Dawn Staley accepted the job as South Carolina's women's basketball coach in May 2008, she ate lunch at a church close to the school's campus. Roscoe Wilson, a former professional player in Europe who lived nearby, approached Staley. He told her to remember his daughter, A'Ja, who was a sixth grader.
Six years later, A'Ja Wilson had grown to 6-5, become the nation's top high school recruit and developed a tight bond with Staley. Last April she turned down scholarships from Connecticut, Tennessee and other premier programs to sign with upstart South Carolina, a decision that has paid immediate dividends for Wilson and the Gamecocks.
On Monday night, No. 1 South Carolina visits No. 2 UConn in the most anticipated women's game this season. The Gamecocks (22-0) are atop the polls for the first time and off to the best start in their history, but they are facing a Huskies team that is 21-1 with victories in 68 of their last 69 games, most of them lopsided.
"It's not a destination game," Staley told Paste BN Sports. "Win, lose or draw, it's not going to define us. If it was for the national championship, absolutely."
Staley, who led South Carolina to its first Southeastern Conference title last season, wasn't sure she could convince Wilson to join a team that returned the conference's player of the year in guard Tiffany Mitchell, freshman of the year in 6-4 center Alaina Coates and a first-team All-SEC selection in forward Aleighsa Welch. When Wilson called Staley and the Gamecocks' assistant coaches 20 minutes before making her college announcement live on ESPNU, they thought all their time spent recruiting Wilson would be wasted.
"She kind of said it in this dry voice, like she was going somewhere else," Staley said. "I kind of rolled my eyes back in my head like, 'Oh, boy. She isn't coming to South Carolina.' Then when she said she's coming to South Carolina, we all just went crazy."
Wilson is second on the Gamecocks in scoring (13.2 points a game) and rebounding (7.0 a game), but she's started only once. Staley prefers bringing Wilson and Coates off the bench a few minutes into the game and keeping them on the court for long stretches. Wilson and Coates were AAU teammates and present matchup problems for opponents.
Still, they have not faced a team like UConn nor a player like Huskies' 6-4 junior forward Breanna Stewart, the national player of the year last season and the Final Four's most outstanding player as a freshman and sophomore. Stewart is UConn's leading scorer and is one of five players averaging more than 11 points per game.
On Nov. 17, Stanford defeated UConn 88-86 in overtime and snapped the Huskies' 47-game winning streak, which included a 40-0 record and national championship last season. Other than that defeat, UConn has been as dominant as ever despite the graduations of point guard Bria Hartley and center Stefanie Dolson, both of whom were first-round selections in the 2014 WNBA draft.
UConn's margin of victory is more than 41 points a game, and it is scoring the most points (89.9) and allowing the fewest points (48.6) in Division I. The Huskies also lead the nation by shooting 53.6% from the floor and limiting teams to a 29.6% field goal percentage.
The Huskies' success comes with distinct challenges, according to coach Geno Auriemma, who earned his 900th career win on Tuesday night and has led UConn to nine national titles and five undefeated seasons.
"When you do lose a game, you have to talk about it for the rest of the year and have to explain it away the rest of the year," Auriemma told Paste BN Sports. "That's kind of the only thing that gets on my nerves and gets on the players' nerves is having to feel like you have to apologize for losing, and then you have to apologize for winning by so much. We're in a unique situation here in Connecticut."
Last fall, Auriemma was the head coach and Staley was one of his assistants on the United States team that won the FIBA World Championship. They hadn't known much about each other before, but they said they enjoyed getting to be together for a month during the practices and games.
On Monday, they will coach on the opposite sidelines for the second time. The first meeting was Dec. 28, 2008, in Staley's first season, and South Carolina lost at home to UConn 77-48. The Huskies understand the Gamecocks are a more difficult team to play now.
"I don't know that we're all sitting around here going, 'Yeah, we can't lose,' " Auriemma said. "I haven't heard that phrase uttered at any time during the course of this year. There's been other times in other years when, yeah, that was the case. That's not the case this year."