Dawn Staley Reacts to NCAA Seed Snub: ‘Prove the Committee Wrong’
Dawn Staley, the head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks women’s basketball team, revealed on Sunday that she was unhappy the NCAA tournament selection committee’s decision. Even though the Gamecocks were given a number one seed, they weren’t awarded the overall number one seed for the NCAA Women’s Tournament. And Staley said she believes they performed well enough to deserve that designation.
Instead, UCLA was given their first number one overall seed after a 30-win mark. South Carolina was given a number one seed in the Birmingham 2 Regional. Other number one seeds were Texas and USC.
In an interview with ESPN, Staley expressed her frustration at the outcome.
“I’m a little bit surprised,” Staley said. “…We put ourselves in the position to be the number one overall seed. And I do think if you do, you know, the blind test and you put our resume against any other team in the field, I think … you’ll pick us. That’s just plain and simple…”
At the Tournament Selection Watch Party, she echoed the same sentiments, News19 reported.
“I think we did much more than probably any other overall number one seed,” she said. “We outdid ourselves, even from last year… My gut was the number one overall seed because we put the work in. That’s what my gut gives me, but man says otherwise, and I don’t really put my faith in man and so we’ll play with it. We’ll play the cards that we’ve been dealt.”
She emphasized to ESPN that they aren’t going to focus on the selection committee’s decision.
“It’s not going to be a motivation for us moving forward,” Daley said to ESPN. “It’s hard enough to win a national championship. We don’t need a chip on our shoulder… I do need to voice the fact that we put a schedule together, we got the most quad wins. And if having more quad one wins doesn’t supersede some of the hiccups that we had during the season, I don’t know what will. So for us, maybe we don’t put ourselves in the position where we have hiccups, so … they don’t have to lower the standard for us to get a number one overall seed.”
“We schedule November and December for March and April,” she added, speaking to ESPN. “And every single time we had a hiccup during the season, we’ve gotten better. I think to the point of playing our best basketball now. Not just collectively, but individuals are playing their best basketball… I hope we take care of business. And I hope we just put ourselves in the position to prove the committee wrong.”
South Carolina’s first game is against number 16 seed Tennessee Tech on Friday, March 21. Whoever wins will play Sunday against either Utah or Indiana.
