Sports
Dawn Staley created South Carolina's perfect championship season out of last year's loss
CLEVELAND — As Dawn Staley stood before her team during a meeting a night before the national championship game, she took a swig of water and began to cough.
“You about to cry, Coach?” a player called from the back of the room.
“No,” she said and then paused. “But I might on Sunday if we win.”
The players laughed, but her assistants sensed sincerity with those words. They’ve seen the burden Staley has carried this year as she has adjusted to a team that’s younger and looser. A team that sometimes wouldn’t respond to text messages or would show up late to meetings. A team that is so unlike the group that graduated a season ago.
Staley has jokingly referred to this season’s roster as a day care, and no one in the Gamecocks locker room really rebuffs that point. They wear it as a badge of honor with their own unique sense of humor. And yet, they won and won and won on the floor as they chased just the 10th undefeated season in women’s college basketball history.
The coaches huddled on the sideline with a minute to go, with the 87-75 win over Iowa assured, the clock just performative at this point and the national championship trophy all but added to their growing case. Staley’s tears began to fall. They continued to fall as she embraced her coaches and players, and as the clock finally expired. They continued during her postgame interview on the court and as she knelt over to catch her breath. She didn’t try to stop them. She wanted to handle the emotions in real time.
“It was emotional for me because of how it ended last year,” Staley said. “It’s heavy, it’s heavy. You carry the burden of every single one of your players, all the coaches and staff members that put so much into our team. And it’s a heavy load to be undefeated, to finish the job. And you get emotional because you just want that for them, and you’re happy that you’re able to — because only one team wins the national championship.”
Dawn Staley overcome with emotion after South Carolina natty win 🥹
Led the Gamecocks to a perfect season 👏 pic.twitter.com/8oLjeIrgwM
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) April 7, 2024
Last year, the Gamecocks were not that one team. They might’ve been the best team and most talented team. South Carolina led the rankings from preseason through the tournament and as the overwhelming favorite to get the job done. But the Gamecocks did not. They fell short, stunningly, to Iowa. That senior class, which went 129-9 over four seasons and lost just three games total in their junior and senior seasons (by a total of 7 points) did everything right, and yet, they did not end their careers with a win. They ended it like 350 other schools — in a loss.
“Last year rocked me,” Staley said. “It rocked me.”
In Staley’s mind, that didn’t completely compute.
How can a team that does everything right not also win the national title? How was she not able to get that group — players who never gave Staley a reason to complain or wince — over the finish line? How could the best team Staley had ever had not get that championship?
“I think it drove her,” assistant coach Lisa Boyer said. “We still talk about we didn’t get over the hill with that group. They were so talented and such a strong unit. … It was hard to understand.”
Staley was continuing to process the ending of last season when this season began. A team with five new starters. A transfer from Oregon. No one who averaged more than 20 minutes a game, and not a single player who had more than three career starts. In so many ways, it was the opposite of what she was working with last season.
Staley has always talked about the look, sound and feel of a team. And this one? It was loud and silly. The players talked, Staley says, about nothing in particular. It was not just unlike last year’s group. They were unlike any other team she had ever had. Not just in some of the mechanisms of how they played on the floor, but especially off the court.
In staff meetings, they’d use the words “pivot” and “meet them where they are” more than they ever had before. Staley talked about how, with such a young team, the coaches were going to need to be both coach and captain, in a way. It was more work, extra energy. They were building the plane as it taxied down the runway.
“If we would’ve stayed the way we were with the freshies,” assistant coach Jolette Law said, “it just wouldn’t have worked.”
“It’s push and pull, but the standard remains the same,” Boyer added. “You have to meet them halfway.”
That push and pull meant realizing that players were going to take 3s in transition. (“When have you ever seen a Dawn Staley group take a 3 in transition?” said Khadijah Sessions, a former player and assistant coach. “Never.”) It meant getting rid of the rule of no phones the night before games. It meant giving players four days off after the SEC title game. “She was like, ‘Guys, this is what they need. They need space. They need to recharge their batteries,’” Law said. “That’s just being able to understand the makeup and feel of what we have.”
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Junior Bree Hall said she didn’t truly appreciate how much Staley had adjusted to them until the Gamecocks’ swing to North Carolina and Duke a month into the season. While at a team dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, Hall asked the team’s director of basketball operations, Ariana Moore, whether she and the other players could order cheesecake for dessert.
“The last two years, when someone said, ‘You can ask Coach,’ it means, ‘don’t even ask,’” Hall said. “Don’t even bother.”
But Hall did. Staley relented. The players got their cheesecake.
In the midst of a confetti shower and tears, these are the proof points of perfection: Phones, days off, space, recharged batteries, cheesecake. It’s the best evidence that Staley, 2 1/2 decades into her coaching career, is far from finished. The tears are the evidence of the weight she carried through a year that tested her every day.
“This is probably the first time in my career that a team has more stamina in certain areas. Like much more stamina than I could discipline them for,” Staley said. “So I’ve learned to not fight certain battles. Not core value battles, not the core principle of who we are and who I stand for, but just that their identity, they play loose. They play free.”
Dawn Staley is feeling it 💃
🎥 @YahooSportspic.twitter.com/1cUnegLyop
— The Athletic WBB (@TheAthleticWBB) April 7, 2024
A year ago — after four seasons of a team doing everything right — the journey did not end in celebration. A year ago, it did not end with a trophy hoisted and a net draped across Staley’s shoulders. But Sunday, she climbed the ladder after a much different journey from ever before, a much harder journey in many ways. It was one that included more pivoting and adjusting, a test every day and reckoning with the ending to last season that rocked her to her core. The sight, sound and feel of this year were completely different, but so too was the ending. In many ways, Staley’s own sight, sound and feel are different because of this year.
The Gamecocks might not have done everything right, might not have even come close, but they were something else that is more rare: They were perfect.
(Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
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Toronto Maple Leafs No. 1 draft pick Gavin McKenna has already been on the ice with the team as it held its development camp this week, but the highly-touted rookie is going to have to make a big change for this fall.
His number.
When he was playing for the Western Hockey League’s Medicine Hat Tigers and then again at Penn State this past season, McKenna wore the No. 72.
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Toronto Maple Leafs top pick Gavin McKenna has revealed that he’ll be opting for a new number for his rookie campaign. (Photo by Brian Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images)
The expectation was that McKenna would wear No. 72 with the Maple Leafs, and he did so this week at development camp. Plenty of fans have also already ordered No. 72 jerseys with his name on the back.
On most rosters, No. 72 is unique enough that he wouldn’t run into any issues wearing it. However, on July 1, the Leafs signed two-time Stanley Cup champion goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who has worn No. 72 for most of his career, except during his first two seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers, when he wore No. 35.
So, some were wondering how this would work out. Would the Leafs want their new franchise player to get his pick of the number litter, or would they defer to a two-time Vezina winner?
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Gavin McKenna wore No. 72 in juniors, as well as last season at Penn State. (Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images)
Well, it turns out that McKenna will be the one swapping numbers, and he’ll be switching to No. 92 this season.
McKenna had to get creative here because the obvious number changes were a no-go in Toronto. Adding 7 and 2 would be 9, but that was retired in honor of Charlie Conacher and Ted Kennedy.
Another option would’ve been to flip the digits and go with No. 27, but that was retired in honor of Frank Mahovlich and Darryl Sittler.
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So, 92 it is.
However, McKenna reached out to one of the three previous players to wear the number, Jeff O’Neill, to ask whether he was comfortable with him using it.
It’s fair to say he was down with the idea.
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McKenna will be a key piece of a Maple Leafs team that is looking to bounce back after a nightmare 2025-26 campaign that saw them finish last in the Atlantic Division.
It’ll be the culmination of nine minor-league seasons. But Eliezer Alfonzo‘s major-league debut on Sunday won’t include his family watching from Dodger Stadium.
Alfonzo’s younger sister, Eliana, and stepmother, Patricia, have been missing since last month when earthquakes caused widespread devastation in his home country of Venezuela.
“I’ve been trying to support my dad a lot, every day talking to him, trying to be with him,” Alfonzo said of the elder Eliezer Alfonzo, a retired major-league catcher. “It’s a little tough from here because I would like to be there with him, supporting him every day.”
His father, of course, would love to be in attendance for his son’s debut. He told him as much when he heard the Dodgers were calling him up.
The Dodgers switched their backup catchers Saturday, optioning Chuckie Robinson. They saw an opportunity to give Alfonzo some runway behind Dalton Rushing, with starting catcher Will Smith’s stay on the injured list expected to extend through the All-Star break.
The elder Eliezer Alfonzo, however, is doing whatever he can to locate his wife and daughter. Their dog was found alive, which gave the younger Eliezer Alfonzo hope.
“We’ve just gotta stay together as a family, as a country,” Alfonzo said. “Because I feel like we’re a beautiful country, we’re a really beautiful people over there. It’s not just about my family, it’s all families that have lost people already. But we’ve got hope. We just pray, we ask God to give them back to us alive.”
Alfonzo’s locker in the clubhouse is next to countryman Miguel Rojas’ stall. Rojas’ wife, Mariana, and their two children were in Venezuela, planning to renew Mariana’s passport and seek Venezuelan citizenship for their children, when the earthquakes hit. They managed to stay safe and have returned to the U.S.
“I just want to be here for him,” Rojas said. “At the end of the day, that’s the best thing I can do for him, is being a good teammate and being a friend for him. Because I know there’s going to be ups and downs. He’s going to have a lot of time to be caught [up] in baseball, and that’s going to probably take his mind away from stuff. But sometimes he’s probably going to feel weak, and he’s going to start thinking about his family. So I’m going to be here, I’m right next to him. And that’s what I told him.”
Rojas, who played against the elder Eliezer Alfonzo for years in Venezuela, reached out Saturday morning and promised him he’d save the ball from his son’s first major-league hit.
Sports
Kylian Mbappé’s seventh goal of the World Cup lifts France past Paraguay in physical Round of 16 match
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The United States may not have been in action on Independence Day, but France — who fittingly played an important role in the Revolutionary War — was on the pitch in Philadelphia against Paraguay in a massive Round of 16 clash for a trip to the quarterfinals.
It was a hot day in the birthplace of our nation, and that made things difficult for both teams in more ways than one.
While Paraguay is a great squad, they were significant underdogs against a heavily favored French team led by superstar Kylian Mbappé, who has been lighting it up this tournament.
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French and Paraguayan players get into a shoving match during their Round of 16 match on Saturday in Philadelphia. (Kyle Ross-Imagn Images)
Obviously, the heat itself is a factor, but it also made for a slower pitch, something that was believed to play into the hands of Paraguay.
However, most of the action in the first half was played on their end as France put the pressure on through the first half hour of the match.
It was intense, and that intensity boiled over in the 35th minute with some pushing and shoving after Mbappé and Paraguay’s Andrés Cubas started a wild shoving match.
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But while the intensity ramped up — and stayed high for pretty much the entire game — Paraguay weathered the storm and had every reason to feel good about reaching halftime with the game scoreless.
France got some more scoring opportunities in the early part of the second half, including a near-breakaway for Mbappé.
France’s Kylian Mbappe scored the go-ahead and ultimately game-winning goal against Paraguay on a penalty kick. (James Lang-Imagn Images)
In the 67th minute, France was awarded a penalty kick for a foul against Desire Doue that had to go to VAR for review, and it was Mbappé who took it.
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Mbappé has tended to do most of his damage in the second half, and that trend continued here with him drilling the penalty past Paraguay goaltender Orlando Gill.
That was his 19th career World Cup goal, and his seventh of this tournament alone, tying him with Argentina’s Lionel Messi for the tournament lead.
Paraguay seemed to fade after the Mbappé goal, but turned it on again late, forcing Mike Maignan to make his first save of the day about 89 and a half minutes into the match.
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It seemed like Paraguay’s plan was to try and get a rise out of the French, and they succeeded in drawing three yellow cards. In fact, they even tried to keep that going after the match with players meeting near midfield for some more pushing and shoving.
But France is moving on, and they will take on Morocco in a quarterfinal match on Thursday in Boston.
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