South Carolina coach Dawn Staley (Image credit: IMAGN)

Dawn Staley’s South Carolina team has been as dominant as expected so far this season — at least on paper. The Gamecocks have faced some close contests and even suffered a surprising loss to UCLA.

On Sunday, they hosted the unranked South Florida Bulls, who entered the game with a 5-5 record. South Carolina let them hang around for far too long, struggling in the fourth quarter before eventually pulling away for a 78-62 victory.

This is only the fourth time this season that Dawn Staley’s team has conceded more than 60 points in a game. During the postgame press conference, the highest-paid Black female coach with a net worth of $12 million was asked if she was concerned about her team’s inconsistency.

“Yeah, you get greedy, you know? You think they have it. Like, this is it. Like, this is our norm now, our standard, and then you backslide a little bit, and it’s just that fight,” she said (3:49). “You just got to continue to fight for the way that we need to play, no matter who we’re playing, and it’s impactful basketball.”

“They’re young, though. They fall victim to just the crowd, pleasing crowd. Just offensively, they get really up for making baskets. They forget about how we build our lead and we build our lead on what we’re able to do defensively.”

Before facing South Florida, South Carolina defeated No. 9 Duke in the ACC/SEC Challenge and secured a blowout win against No. 12 TCU.

Dawn Staley shares adjustments in South Carolina’s game plan against USF

With last season’s star player, Kamilla Cardoso, now in the WNBA, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley has been working to fill the void left by her departure.

To start the season, the Gamecocks relied heavily on their guards for scoring. However, in Sunday’s win against South Florida, Staley made key adjustments to involve the team’s post players more effectively.

“I think early in the season, we were pretty guard-heavy in what we were doing,” Dawn Staley said. “We weren’t giving them as many looks as we needed to give them.”

“So we’ve been working on being intentional about getting them the ball and they’ve done a great job … their production from a rebounding, defensive standpoint and now offensively, it’s starting to click for some of them.”

South Carolina’s post players scored a combined 49 points against the Bulls, a significant improvement from the 20 points they managed in their previous game against TCU.

Freshman Joyce Edwards led the team with 15 points, while senior Sania Feagin added 14 points. Junior duo Chloe Kitts and Ashlyn Watkins each contributed 10 points.