Everything Dawn Staley said after South Carolina fell short to the Sooners

Thursday night, the Gamecocks picked up their second loss of the season to Oklahoma in an 82-94 overtime affair. The nightmare in Norman pushed the program’s record to 19-2 and 5-1 in SEC play.

Here’s everything head coach Dawn Staley had to say after the disquieting defeat.

What happens in overtime to your team?

“They ran into a team that actually wanted to win more, and they made winning plays, and we didn’t. It’s not really rocket science; it’s really a simplistic thing.”

How impressed are you with Aaliyah (Chavez) so far, especially in her first season in this league?

“She was great, she ran her team, hit big shots, delivered the ball. Everything that you want a point guard to do. She’s having a great freshman year.”

NEW! Message board for South Carolina Women’s Basketball! 🏀

What are some of the conversations like and what are some of the adjustments to make before Vanderbilt?

“Conversations are real. We didn’t do enough to win. When you do that in our league, especially on the road, you pay for it. You pay for it with defeat. It’s not a familiar territory for us, but we’ll live. Our goals are still in front of us. Every single one of them is still right in front of us. We’ll live, we’ll learn, and we’ll move on and be back to prep for Vandy tomorrow.”

In your eyes, what did you see with her (Ta’Niya Latson) game today?

“Just struggle. Didn’t really get good looks at the basket, didn’t really get out in transition a whole lot. I think we’ve got to do a better job of putting her in positions where she can score. She can make plays. Wasn’t there tonight, though she forced it a little bit. Sometimes you do that when you’re used to scoring points, but we got to do a better job and a better position to score and feel good about it.”

You had good bigs trying to guard (Raegan) Beers. How tough was the battle inside tonight?

“She’s a tough guard. I thought she got her positioning, which is her normal positioning that you can’t allow. You can’t allow her to have direct passes; you try to lob it over top and get some help behind it. We just didn’t have enough of that. Credit to Beers, she did a great job fighting for her position, and she was consistent with it. For us, I thought we’ve done better jobs in previous years, particularly last year. We got a new set of bigs that have to understand what you need to do on a possession-to-possession basis to not give her that sweet spot.”

USC’s schedule only continues to intensify. South Carolina comes back into Columbia on Sunday, where the Gamecocks are scheduled to host the top 5 Commodores in an SEC showdown.

NEW! Message board for South Carolina Women’s Basketball!