Everything Dawn Staley said to the media after South Carolina’s succesful road trip to college station

Monday night, the No. 3 Gamecocks took down Texas A&M 71-56. The victory pushes the Gamecocks to 22-2 overall, plus an impressive 8-1 record in SEC play.

Here’s everything Women’s Basketball Head Coach Dawn Staley had to say after the win.

What do you think changed there in the third quarter to seemingly get back in control?

“I don’t think it was ever under control for the teams that are in our league. For us just turnovers, unaware of the shot clock situation, and bad spacing. They capitalized because they scored a lot of points on us when we turned it over. Close to half of their points came from our turnovers. That was their defense and their grit and their ability to stay locked in and try to get a win.”

With what Joyce Edwards did for you late, is that what you look for in your stars in a close game like that?

“Yeah, she can playmake. I thought down the stretch we were a lot more focused on getting the ball where it needed to be. I think for a lot of the game offensively, we didn’t do a good job of moving the ball in a way that really impacts the defense. So we just played according to how Texas A&M wanted us to play. They did a great job of executing defensively.”

What was it defensively that was causing you guys issues?

“Well, one, they were pretty aggressive. Two, they just stunted and tried to keep us on the side of the floor. When you don’t get ball movement, and you don’t get ball reversals, and you have to concentrate on one side of the floor, the percentage of your scoring gets lower and lower and lower. They did a pretty good job of just being disciplined to that. They rebounded the ball pretty well as well. As for us, we got a lot more ball movement in the fourth quarter when we needed to score.”

What did you think about your defense in the fourth quarter?

“Other than the turnovers and the offensive rebounds, I think our half-court defense was pretty good. We just got skewed with our inability to take care of the basketball and give them turnover points. They made us pay with second-chance points as well.”

What were your thoughts on Ny’Ceara Pryor’s performance tonight, and what was the message to the team when momentum seemed to be going towards the Aggies?

“I thought she was great. Thank goodness there is a foul limitation, because if there wasn’t, they would probably be in a much different situation with two of the stars on their team because they fouled out.

Momentum. It’s momentum. It doesn’t matter what team; momentum is faceless, right? Momentum is teamless. Momentum is momentum. And the team that’s able to grab it at any given moment can win basketball games. They had it at the end of the third quarter. And we tried to figure out how to do that. I think we had more defensive momentum after we stopped fouling in the fourth quarter, and then we were able to score.”