USC coaching staff has ‘a little bit’ of everything. How they’re fueling an NCAA run
South Carolina’s coaching staff isn’t drinking the Kool-Aid.
Well, they’re sipping it, coach Dawn Staley said Saturday, but no big gulps.
They’re aware of the fact that this is an elite Elite Eight-bound basketball team. But they’re also aware, more than anyone else, of its too-close-to-costly pitfalls. Take the Sweet 16 for example – a game USC won by four points after leading by as much as 22.
“I’m worried every day,” Staley said. ”Every day. Every single day. They’re still very young. And they’ve had young moments. They’ve had mature moments. They’ve had questionable moments. But we sit here where we are, and I don’t lose sight of giving them the credit they deserve.”
The 2023-24 Gamecocks are a competitive bunch. They hate losing, despite knowing almost nothing about it after 35 consecutive wins. Their ability to pull victories out of the gnarliest of circumstances speaks to the culture they’ve created, Staley said.
But there are folks behind the scenes, and on the bench, who help bring out the best in these players. Staley, Lisa Boyer, Jolette Law, Mary Wooley, Winston Gandy and Khadijah Sessions. It’s their eclectic personalities and approaches to the game that make this team so special.
“We have a coaching staff full of different emotional types,” Staley said.
“Jolette’s kind of calm and cool. Mary is just calm, just thoughtful. Khadijah is wild. She’s our youthful energy. Coach Boyer, she’s got stamina to talk about basketball and what’s happening every single pass. Not possession. Pass. If it’s not perfected in the way that her vision sees it, we hear about it. It’s almost too much.
“And then I think I meet the moment, whatever the moment demands, I’m gonna be there. So I think it’s a little bit of all of us. But our players have really embraced all of our personalities, to the point where they know it’s coming from a place of wanting us to be successful.”
A smile spread across Sania Feagin’s face when asked about her coaching staff. The first name off her lips is Staley — “the one and only Dawn Staley,” the matriarch of South Carolina basketball.
“I know when to play with her and when not to play with her,” Feagin said. “But when I know she’s in a mood and she doesn’t wanna play, I still play with her. Because I’m Sania.”
Raven Johnson described Staley as a mother figure with whom she can go to with basketball- and non-basketball-related concerns. The objective is always to win, of course, and it’s deadly serious. But in the tension- and compassionate-filled moments, the love seeps out of her.
Boyer is a basketball savant. She is methodical and disciplined. She is Staley’s right-hand woman. And anything you ask Boyer for, Feagin said, she will help you obtain.
Winston Gandy, one of two new additions to South Carolina’s coaching staff this season, is sarcastic, Feagin said. But the players get him, and he gets them, with his uncanny ability to package useful basketball information into a format easy for this Generation Z roster to understand. He’s also played a big role in getting the Gamecocks in the gym, putting up shots, which has improved both their field goal (49.8%) and 3-point percentages (40%) from last season (46.2% from the field and 31% from 3).
Sessions, just eight years removed from her own college basketball career, brings an element to the staff South Carolina has been missing for a long time.
“Khadijah’s energy is awesome,” Bree Hall said, “and that is something I feel like we’ve missed for the past two years because we haven’t had that young coach to bring that spark, that energy into players.”
Sessions and MiLaysia Fulwiley have a special bond through a shared experience of playing as a guard in Staley’s system. They watch Fulwiley’s film together after every game, she said, combing through the highs and lows of each performance.
Fulwiley also has a unique relationship with Law, who recruited her out of middle and high school. They have similar origin stories. Fulwiley came up as a star basketball player in Columbia, while Law did the same down the road in Florence.
“Two young girls who grew up in South Carolina that didn’t really have anything, wasn’t the best student,” Fulwiley said with a wry smile. “She said I remind her of (herself), just the way I am as a person, and how sweet I am, and how I improved from my younger self.
“I love her.”
This story was originally published March 30, 2024 at 12:35 PM with the headline "USC coaching staff has ‘a little bit’ of everything. How they’re fueling an NCAA run."
