TAMPA — In this star-driven era of women’s basketball, South Carolina stands apart. Turn on March Madness at home for more than 15 minutes, and odds are you don’t need to watch the games to learn who moves the needle. Watch the commercials: There’s JuJu Watkins summoning Jake from State Farm, and Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice chilling in a fake dorm room for AT&T, and Flau’jae Johnson lending her rapping prowess to promote Powerade.
Then there’s the ad for Under Armour, South Carolina’s apparel partner. The parting shot is of Coach Dawn Staley and six of her players standing together on the court, crossing their arms and hushing their doubters. If there’s a star in the group, it’s undeniably Staley, diminutive yet outstanding as usual, sporting her signature beads and bucket visor.
Marketing genius this ain’t — it had to be a group shot. South Carolina’s uncommonness as it returns to a second consecutive national title game Sunday extends beyond the record books. The Gamecocks will battle Connecticut for their fourth national championship, which would be their third in four seasons. But they are the only team at the Final Four that doesn’t have a go-to player. They’re the only powerhouse program in the country not led by a name-brand star.
Staley didn’t quite plan it this way, but she has managed to make her team’s singular plurality into a superpower. Connecticut — which South Carolina beat in the 2022 title game — has the most dangerous offensive trio in the country, led by megastar Paige Bueckers, but South Carolina’s strength is its depth. Its two sensational leading scorers, Joyce Edwards (12.7 points per game) and MiLaysia Fulwiley (11.8), come off the bench. Its third-leading scorer, forward Chloe Kitts (10.2), is also its leading rebounder (7.8 per game). Staley has nine active players, not including the injured Ashlyn Watkins, who average at least 11 minutes.
That makes the Gamecocks a bear to scout and, when they play their best, keeps their legs fresh enough to apply relentless defensive pressure without compromising execution.
“I think a lot of us go into the game and completely exert ourselves,” senior guard Bree Hall said Saturday, shrugging. “We have a bench that can play.”
South Carolina’s balance is rare these days for a few reasons, the first being that few programs can recruit and retain elite talent in bulk as Staley can.
The transfer portal and name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities are contributing to a great talent dispersal in the women’s game, where standout high school recruits and accomplished college players strike out with the goal of planting a flag — and making some money — at less established programs. Where did Texas native Aaliyah Chavez, the No. 1 high school recruit in the Class of 2025, finally choose to play last month over Texas, LSU, South Carolina and UCLA?
That would be Oklahoma, a program on the rise where immediate playing time is up for grabs along with a chance to play with first-team all-SEC center Raegan Beers, who transferred from Oregon State last offseason.
At South Carolina, extensive depth flourished because Staley’s group stuck around long enough to develop within her system — and then pass down the merits of trusting the process.
“It’s great. You just play basketball,” Edwards said, when asked Friday how the team stays organized on the court without a clear pecking order. “… You don’t have to feel like you have to force the ball to somebody, or you don’t have to feel like somebody has to score first to win.”
Edwards’s nonchalant humility is the norm in the Gamecocks’ locker room — their lack of a star might not have been by design, but their disposition is.
Staley’s program sticks to a formula she lays out clearly to recruits from the jump: She runs a merit-based system, meaning she and her coaching staff start from scratch each year when determining the starting lineup. She doesn’t tell recruits they might be sitting on the bench for a year, or two, or three, nor does she promise minutes. She just tells them they’ll be in competition alongside everyone else.
“Production is the key. Production is nameless. It’s faceless. It’s experience-less,” Staley said Saturday. “I’ve probably lost recruits because I’m never going to tell any young person that you’re going to automatically start. Young people, you need to bet on yourself. If you think you’re that good, you don’t need a handout. You just allow your work to speak for itself.”
That attitude calls to a certain type of player, with the rare profile of an elite high school star who doesn’t mind sharing the spotlight — or is at least open to the idea. Guard Raven Johnson, the No. 2 recruit in the country when she graduated high school in 2021, finally became a starter last season.
It is hard, she said, to come out of high school as a dominant player, then wait your turn. But Staley excels at fostering connections between alpha players.
“You honestly have to trust the process, because when you’re here, you’ve got people in front of you, Johnson said. “You just have to wait your turn and know it will help you, and instill pro habits into you, instill leadership skills.”
For Hall, who also came off the bench before becoming a starter as a junior last season, coming to South Carolina wasn’t a question of shelving superstar dreams. She was a top recruit in Ohio, but for all her talent, Hall’s high school team lost in the second round of the state tournament in her junior and senior years.
She didn’t think of college as a place where she would be forced to share the spotlight. She saw it as an opportunity to share the burden.
“I just wanted to win. That’s all I really cared about,” Hall said. “… I wanted to be around great pieces. I just wanted to win. I don’t know how else to really explain it. In high school, I was ‘the person’ on our team, and I felt like it just was really, really hard to win.”
Winning is easier for Hall now. And for her and the three other starters from her starry recruiting class who came off the bench during their first year or two at South Carolina, they don’t take the responsibility lightly.
