South Carolina women's basketball: Everything Dawn Staley said after falling to UCLA in the 2026 Women's National Championship

South Carolina women’s basketball head coach Dawn Staley spoke with the media following a loss to UCLA in the 2026 NCAA Women’s Basketball National Championship.

Here is everything she had to say.

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Dawn, last year I think you said UConn out-talented but not out-hustled. Do you feel the same way today?

“It kind of felt like the same thing. I thought they came out and disrupted from a defensive standpoint. Then they pretty much got what they wanted offensively. When they did it, they created second-chance opportunities. We just didn’t have it today. We tried, but we just didn’t have it today. They were the better team today. Congratulations to them.”

“Sometimes you’re part of women’s basketball history. It’s not favorable to you. You could see if you’re going to lose to a team, like UCLA, you want to lose to a team that just really out-works you, out-executed you, made it very difficult for you to perform at a high level. It was a direct reflection of what they did to us.”

Can you sum up a little bit what this weekend was like for you, the highs of Friday, a rough one today, a little bit of drama in between?

“I mean, it’s great. We got a chance to play on the last day of college women’s basketball, a season of a lot of great basketball, great talent, great coaching. Just great viewership. I mean, when you’re in this position, you don’t win all of ’em. There are too many great teams out here, too many great players and coaches that decrease your chances of winning national championships.”

“The trick is to continue to get here. The more you get here, the more you increase your chances of winning. So we got a lot of work cut out for us. I really enjoyed the weekend. I enjoy every challenge that basketball creates. I enjoy facing them. I enjoy dealing, playing the hand that I’m dealt. This weekend includes that.”

How do you see Ta’Niya and Raven as WNBA players? Make the case for them ahead of next week.

“I think they are well-rounded individuals from a basketball standpoint. They are great humans. You want somebody in your franchise that you see that’s going to come to work every day on time, early, come in early, stay late, then everything in between. They’re great teammates. They’re people that you want to play with. One, they’re winners. Two, they just have a lot of basketball experience.”

“I just think that they’re ready. They’ve created pro habits. A lot of what someone that’s unprepared for a WNBA training camp, they’ll be prepared for it. Maybe the terminology will be a little bit different. When it gets down to basketball, they can be coached by anybody.”

That first quarter, it seemed like there were good looks you were taking that weren’t dropping. Obviously, the first semifinal you were able to get going in the second half. Couldn’t get in a rhythm after the first quarter. How hard is it to dig out of that?

“It’s really hard. I mean, I thought the first quarter, first half, we had a lot of people taking shots that aren’t normal for us. So we didn’t do a good job of getting the people that probably was supposed to get some better looks the ball.”

“But I think UCLA had a lot to do with it. Not going to say that they didn’t. They really did. I didn’t think we had to play perfect basketball, but we had to play better basketball. We had to make shots, create offense for our defense. We had to be better defensively, actually pushing them off their spots. I think they got to where they needed to go. We didn’t apply enough pressure for us to make an impact on the offensive side of the ball. Because you can have a good defensive possession, but give up an offensive rebound, that’s just really deflating.”

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I know the sting of a loss is still present in the short-term. Cori Close was speaking up here yesterday, and she spoke about how you had invested in her as a coach. If not quite exactly the student meeting the teacher, but to know somebody who you invested in has had that success, even though it came at your expense, what does that mean for you?

“I’m always happy for people that worked hard in this game, who are really quality people. I want good things to happen for them. Cori is one of those people who really works at making our game better. Not just UCLA, but our entire game.”

“She’s always speaking out, uplifting our game in so many areas that it’s hard to continue to do that while maintaining the job that you have to do every day. But she finds the time. Although we didn’t win, I can swallow it because we lost to a really good human being and a good team that represent women’s basketball well.”

When you say the team didn’t have it today, is that a mental aspect? What challenge do you kind of face in the game in attempting to pull them out of that state?

“Well, I mean, we scored how many points? 51 points, right? I think we could score about 70 on any given day. You could tell. Shorts were shot. I thought we didn’t really do a good job at making extra passes, like the things we were doing probably worked for other teams, but other teams didn’t have a 6’7″. You have to navigate differently.”

“You can’t go in there thinking you can score over her or through her, so sometimes you have to go in there and draw and kick, maybe draw and kick another time. We actually wanted to do that. We took the first shot available. Sometimes that shot didn’t go in. A lot of times that shot didn’t go in. We weren’t creating extra possessions offensive rebounding. Things we do a lot. The things we built our success on weren’t happening for us tonight. And UCLA made us pay for it.”

How did you feel about was the game different in a team that has never won a championship versus your team that has multiple championships? You said everything else would be addressed, but was there any impact of that distraction coming into this day? Did you feel that with your team or with yourself?

“One, I mean, UCLA is a quality team with very experienced players who got a taste of being in the Final Four last year. You make adjustments. You use that experience as a learning lesson, and you come back sharper, and you increase your chances of winning. From last year to this year, they played determined last year, but they played more determined this year. They were so close. They’ve had the experience to do that. They took advantage of it.”

“As far as distractions, I mean, there weren’t any distractions that caused us to lose this basketball game.”

Both you and Cori, no matter what the situation, you always talk about the game, growing the game no matter what. What’s the next mountain to climb for the game as you look forward?

“I mean, obviously, there are talks of the transfer portal, just getting a hold of the free agency part of our game. We got units now. We’d just like to see us increase those because that’s where the value is. The value of our sport is going to be how much we can pour back into our budgets, how much we can actually be looked at as a sport that is revenue-producing. We’re going to be always challenged with making that better. It’s a start, but it’s not a start in which ADs at the end of the day aren’t going to look at what we’re spending and what we’re doing in a sport that isn’t bringing in enough revenue.”

For Gabi Jaquez to have 21-10-5, how impactful was that on what happened here?

“Hard matchup. Hard matchup. You come into a game, you know exactly what she’s going to do, and she does it. I mean, it’s hard. She’s relentless. She’s a relentless rebounder. She’s a relentless, just championship-type behavior. Intangibles are needed in order for you to win. If you don’t play, prioritize her on the court, she’s going to make you pay. She did that against us.”

It’s early, but can you look ahead to next year’s roster, where you might look to add in the portal, if at all?

“Yeah, I mean, obviously, we got to add some guard play, definitely some lead guard play, some more athleticism in the guard department. I think our front line is pretty good, especially the ones that are coming back from injury, coming back to our team. We got to add some guard play.”

Six straight Final Fours, third straight national championship game, won two of those, three in five years. You know the stats. That level of success, do you feel like you’ve reached the point where, over at UConn, they say the pressure is that if you don’t win a national championship, people feel like the season is a failure. Do you feel like South Carolina has kind of reached that point? What does that pressure feel like?

“Well, we feel the pressure anytime we lose a basketball game. I mean, everyone goes crazy when we lose one basketball game. It’s hard out here, it really is hard in our sport. So, I mean, we do feel the pressure. We’re used to winning and we’re used to winning at a pretty high clip. How long you sustain that? We don’t know. We just try to wake up every day and just be better than we were the day before.”

“To get here is hard. To win here is harder, right? We just have to keep getting here and make adjustments when we don’t win. Obviously, we got smacked today. We got to figure out how we smack back and put ourselves in the position where we’re hoisting the trophy at the end of the day.”

In sports, we talk a lot about its delayed gratification. For Cori Close, it took her 15 years to have this opportunity to lift the trophy. You know what that’s like. To see the way she has continued to invest specifically in her program, stay committed, what can you say about her character?

“I mean, that’s what you want. You don’t want to be given anything. You want to work for it. I mean, 15 years is a long time that you’ve dedicated to young people and to our game. The game finally paid her back.

I think it took me 17 years to win a national championship. At times, we got close, in ’15. Someone would send me a text message, ‘What’s delayed is not denied.’ That’s the case with Cori. But it’s super gratifying. I know the feeling in their locker room. I know you’re just full because you’ve reached the mountaintop and you’ve done it the right way. When it’s like that, it’s incredibly gratifying.”

You said the goal is to keep getting back to this point to increase your odds of being able to win a championship. You’ve brought a number of different teams with different makeups. What do you feel like the makeup of this team is and what can you build on as you try to fill those voids to get back to this point?

“I mean, Raven was the last of the core group of players that had been together that actually had taken our program to the very top. I just think we just need players who are committed to team, committed to getting better as individuals, creating pro habits so when they are challenged to perform at a high level, it won’t be something that they wrestle with. It is a norm.”

“I think we do a great job of just keeping things in perspective for our players, creating spaces in which you can handle the truth and also creating spaces in which there’s open communication, what’s good, what’s not good. We have those type of conversations. We need players that are able to handle those situations because that’s what it takes to get to this point and win.”

There are reports that Geno did reach out to you since we talked to you last. Can you share how, when, anything of that nature about the conversation?

“Yes, that’s a Geno question, right? It really is a Geno question. I haven’t heard from Geno, so… I have not. I got 800 text messages. I don’t know if he texted or not. Like, I don’t want — this is UCLA’s day, right? Let’s keep it UCLA, them winning the national championship.”

“Again, I will address all of that at another time, just not this weekend. We’re not going to damper UCLA’s day with it. We talk about South Carolina, us losing, talk about UCLA winning the national championship, what’s great about our game today.”

For clarification, as you now reflect on this season, what is the one word you would describe this year, with the absence of Chloe Kitts as well?

“You want me to be honest? I said this before, but don’t take it, like, literally. When we knew we weren’t going to have Chloe Kitts, we considered her dead. We don’t bring it up. She can’t help us. She’s not a part of our team in a way of preparation and being on the floor.”

“She was in other areas where she would talk to the players and help them out. But when it comes to just game prep, we just didn’t bring her name up once we knew she wasn’t able to play.”

Despite the loss this afternoon, when you consider your journey throughout this season, what is one takeaway you’ll take from now going into next season?

“I mean, losing in the national championship game, the way we lost, I guess that will be the thing that really drives us. You need something to drive you throughout the really hard times and the challenging times, and also the good times.”

“Although things can go well your way, there’s always things that you can work on, there’s always these situations that’s lurking, like it’s always lurking, always in the back of my mind anytime we lose. When we have an opportunity to win a national championship, you just try to get better, find the lessons within this game, and try to get better.”

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