CLEVELAND — Caitlin’s Coronation turned into Dawn’s Dynasty.
South Carolina ensured that people will talk about 'em now, beating Iowa and National Player of the Year Caitlin Clark, 87-75, at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse on Sunday for its third national championship. Wearing the crown for the third time in seven tries, and twice in three years, coach Dawn Staley and the Gamecocks completed a perfect 38-0 season a year after Iowa handed them their only loss.
That loss was what motivated point guard Raven Johnson to stay in the gym for extra work all offseason, relentlessly pushing toward this moment. It’s why she labeled this the team’s “revenge season” and said throughout that the national title was the only goal.
Having gotten this close, she issued a simple reminder a day before.
“We didn’t come this far just to get this far,” she said.
They took the final step.
Through a 10-0 deficit to start, through some interesting officiating, through Clark’s 30 points and seemingly everyone outside the Gamecocks’ fan base wanting her to win to cement her Greatest Of All Time legacy, they still won the title.
In a season when, perhaps more than any other year in the sport’s history, individual accomplishments were spread throughout the game, a squad from Columbia that truly played as a team won it all.
“If you guys would have seen us, just the stuff we went through in the summer and the hard work we put in, we deserve this, honestly,” Johnson said. “Coach, she gives us so much leeway. She lets us be loose. She just lets us be who we are.”
Down big before it remembered there was a game to play, USC fought back to take a halftime lead. Freshman Tessa Johnson exploded off the bench, raining 19 points mostly tied to her signature 3-pointers, and fellow rookie MiLaysia Fulwiley took the game in her hands when the first quarter looked to be spelling doom.
Fulwiley, who announced her arrival with a legendary play in Paris to start this season, scored nine points on Sunday to further send the message: Especially with Clark leaving, another superstar is poised to take her place.
“I’m just so excited I got to play against her. Next year, hopefully they recognize a whole lot of everybody and not focus the attention on just one person,” Fulwiley said. “I feel like we all deserve it.”
USC took the lead at halftime, then a six-point spurt out of the locker room let the Gamecocks know the win was there to be had. Clark never went away, but every time the Hawkeyes (33-5) cut the deficit to a basket, USC responded.
Ashlyn Watkins, Tessa Johnson and Bree Hall combined for an 8-0 run after Iowa trailed by two in the third quarter. The lead swelled to 14 with 7:40 to go, but the Hawkeyes had one last run in them to get the game to six points.
USC made its free throws and survived a few misses, leaving it to Final Four Most Outstanding Player Kamilla Cardoso and Watkins to hit a couple of putbacks to restore the lead. The countdown was then on.
Staley, always so stoic, had tears leaking. She felt last year’s disappointment in every minute of this year.
“I was like that throughout the entire season, but for this one I wasn’t going to allow what I felt happened to us last year to happen this year,” she said. “I mean, 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.”
South Carolina wasn’t talked about much all season long, so it’s only right that it spoiled the narrative. In the national championship game as perhaps the most ignored 37-0 team in history, adopting the attitude that everyone but them and their voracious fan base wanted Iowa and transcendent star Clark to win, the Gamecocks stole the glory.
The Gamecocks finished just the 10th perfect season since the NCAA women’s tournament began in 1982. With an entirely new starting five from last year’s team that only lost one game, they won the one prize that that senior-dominated squad didn’t.
And they did it against Clark and Iowa, the only combo that beat last year’s USC team. Clark, two-time National Player of the Year and the leading career scorer in the history of Division I men’s and women’s basketball, will forever be mentioned among the legends, but will leave college without a championship.
USC’s team, meanwhile, has gathered with the best. Staley became just the fifth coach to win three or more titles, and did it with a true team.
Cardoso led the team in scoring and rebounding, because she was the first option on offense and at 6-foot-7, could board with the best. But Fulwiley wound up second on the team in scoring despite only starting three games.
Transfer import Te-Hina Paopao was one of the country’s top 3-point shooters while the old guard(s), Raven Johnson and Hall, were steady in the frontcourt. Watkins blossomed as a ferocious defender and rebounder while Chloe Kitts, Sania Feagin, Tessa Johnson and even Sakima Walker each had flashes in the spotlight.
Everybody contributed, every game. USC ended the season with just 10 players, but the first nine all played extensively and each took turns in being the key to victory.
Staley admitted throughout the year that this group had been challenging to coach — not in a negative way, but in that she had to learn to back off because as much as they could frustrate her in practice, they played brilliantly.
On Sunday, they were awash in confetti and new championship caps and T-shirts, joyously celebrating what they earned. They were young and they were inexperienced and they had their rough moments, but they loved each other, believed they would find a way to win and they did. Every single time.
“I don’t think that’s talked about enough, what we’ve been able to do, and I don’t know why. And I really don’t care why,” Staley said. “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing the right way, whether we are the popular or unpopular successful programs in the country.”
This one was for “The Freshies,” that fabled senior class that seemed destined to win its second straight national title a year ago and lost to Iowa in the Final Four.
This one was for Staley, who cemented a dynasty and proved that even in her 16th year, she could adapt her approach to fit her team.
This one was for everyone who had come before, from that 10-win squad in Staley’s first season to everyone who had laid a brick in what’s become a program that is an astounding 109-3 over the last three seasons.
This one was for everybody who didn’t talk about them in this season of tremendous individual accomplishment in women’s basketball, with various USC players and coaches saying throughout the season (and without anger), “We’ll make them talk about us.”
The Gamecocks, as they have been in the Top 25 for all but one week this season, are undisputedly No. 1.
“This team, we’re going to be good. Coach Staley, we have the best coach, what, in the country, in the nation, in the whole wide world?,” Raven Johnson said. “It’s no telling what she’s going to add to the pieces that’s already here. I just say, ‘Be on the lookout.’”
