It’s Clearly South Carolina’s Time. Here’s How Dawn Staley Crafted It.

MINNEAPOLIS — Daybreak Staley was dropping.

Staley, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and Corridor of Famer as a participant, had coached at Temple, in her hometown, Philadelphia, for eight years, however the workforce couldn’t get past the primary weekend of the N.C.A.A. match.

So when Staley took over as coach of South Carolina’s ladies’s basketball workforce in 2008, she had one purpose on her thoughts: “I needed to win,” Staley mentioned Saturday. “I needed to win the nationwide championship.”

Underneath Staley, the Gamecocks have made 10 consecutive N.C.A.A. tournaments, earned 4 journeys to the Ultimate 4 and, after Sunday night time, gained two nationwide championships. This has been a gradual burn for Staley, who rebuilt South Carolina’s program from the bottom up. That Sunday’s win was towards Connecticut, essentially the most adorned ladies’s basketball program, suggests a altering of the guard within the sport.

Staley constructed a powerhouse workforce led by Aliyah Boston, who gained awards as the highest participant and defender. Beginning guards Zia Cooke, Brea Beal and Destanni Henderson, Staley mentioned, have “logged a variety of minutes collectively,” and consequently they play like “shorthand writing.”

“You don’t must say a lot,” Staley mentioned. “You’ll be able to simply level, and so they know the change.”

Her rosters have proved themselves again and again. Staley has led the Gamecocks to their solely No. 1 rankings in program historical past and despatched eight Gamecocks to the W.N.B.A draft, together with the No. 1 total choose in 2018, A’ja Wilson, who helped convey house the Gamecocks’ first nationwide title in 2017.

On Sunday night time, Wilson was available rooting for her alma mater.

UConn, led by Coach Geno Auriemma, laid the groundwork for a lot of that success, Staley mentioned. Auriemma has gained 11 championships at UConn, the place he has been in cost since 1985.

“Whether or not individuals imagine that or not, he has helped our sport develop tremendously,” Staley mentioned. “I feel a variety of what we’re in a position to do and get is off the backs of their success. I feel the individuals up at UConn deal with their ladies’s basketball workforce as a sport. They’re pressured to due to all of the successful and all of the success, however you possibly can take a web page out of their guide.”

Going into the championship sport, neither coach had misplaced a nationwide championship sport. Then Staley defeated Auriemma.

“I instructed Daybreak after the sport, they have been one of the best workforce within the nation all yr,” Auriemma mentioned Sunday night time.

Whereas South Carolina is pushing individuals to assume past UConn because the gold customary in ladies’s school basketball, Staley hesitated to name her program a dynasty. However she acknowledged the enjoying discipline was altering.

“What I feel is necessary as a Black lady and coach is the best way you do it, like the instance that you just set for different coaches to comply with,” Staley mentioned after Sunday’s sport.

“I simply wish to be a terrific instance of how one can do issues the appropriate manner and maintain our sport in a spot the place the integrity is unbroken, as a result of that’s the best way we’ll develop,” she added.

Whereas South Carolina’s two titles might appear to be child steps in comparison with UConn’s 11 championships, the game is not dominated by one workforce. This season has proven how ladies’s basketball is in a really totally different period, with a wealth of expertise is unfold throughout the nation evinced, partly, in six double-digit seeded groups making the spherical of 16.

South Carolina is a member of the Southeastern Convention, which is thought primarily for soccer. Staley, by way of her success, has drawn way more consideration to ladies’s basketball at her college. She has positioned herself because the highest-paid Black lady teaching a workforce and cultivated a loyal fan base that has led the nation in attendance for girls’s school basketball for seven straight seasons.

“When she first obtained right here, it wasn’t all rainbows and stuff,” Beal, a junior guard, mentioned forward of Sunday’s sport. “I feel, simply wanting again on that and the way she constructed a terrific neighborhood, a terrific place, I feel simply having our personal legacy and constructing that for us was key.”

Candace Parker of the W.N.B.A.’s Chicago Sky mentioned South Carolina is carving out its personal path.

“I’d say the following U.S.C. is the following U.S.C., I feel everyone seems to be chasing who they wish to be, their very own identification,” Parker mentioned after Sunday’s sport. “I feel they’re who they’re and so they’re doing what they’re meant to be.”

If Boston has her manner, Sunday night time’s win is just the start.

“I feel over the previous couple years you’ve simply been in a position to see this program and the way it simply continues to develop,” Boston mentioned, including that extra gamers will wish to go to South Carolina due to “the ambiance that we’ve right here.”