USC fans celebrate the women's basketball team national title Sunday by taking a plunge in the Thomas Cooper Library fountain on campus.
We’ve never had a lot in South Carolina.
Much of our state is rural and poor. We always seem to find ourselves near the top of all the wrong lists.
But, every once in a while, something comes along that gives us a moment’s respite from all that ails us. Something that brings us together and galvanizes us, and makes us proud of the Palmetto State and all its treasures. Something truly special.
The University of South Carolina women’s basketball team and Coach Dawn Staley have delivered just such a moment.
Staley’s Gamecocks have ascended to the pinnacle of women’s college basketball, bringing home the program’s first national championship with a 67-55 victory over Mississippi State on April 2 in Dallas.
Several days have passed since the title game, and I’m sure more than a few of you are still expecting to wake up any minute and find out it was all just a dream. Trust me, it’s real.
You can go to the NCAA’s website and double check if you want. The University of South Carolina really did win a national title in women’s hoops. The confetti has fallen. The USC flag has flown above the State House. A victory parade is slated for 3 p.m. Sunday in downtown Columbia.
This moment is notable for a number of reasons, but chiefly because it comes as a validation of all that Staley has worked so tirelessly to build here in Columbia. And trust me, her work here has been considerable. She essentially created a women’s basketball empire here from the ground up, brick by brick.
Nine years ago, in Staley’s first season at the school, the Gamecocks finished 10-18 and won just two Southeastern Conference games. Not that many people noticed. The team averaged just 2,793 fans per game that year in cavernous Colonial Life Arena.
Of course, things change, don’t they?
Staley’s Gamecocks finished the 2017 season with a record of 33-4. They won the SEC regular season title for the fourth consecutive year, and the SEC Tournament for the third straight time. And the fans? They can’t get enough. South Carolina averaged more than 12,200 fans per game this season, tops in the nation. It marked the third straight season USC has led the country in women’s hoops attendance.
There’s no other way to say it: Columbia loves Dawn Staley. She’s the pied piper of basketball in the Capital City. During those dark days when former Coach Darrin Horn was torpedoing the USC men’s basketball program, and during the early years of Coach Frank Martin’s methodical rebuild of the men’s squad, it was Staley’s crew that gave us a reason to keep showing up at Colonial Life Arena, and gave us a reason to believe that, yes, incredible things can happen on the court at South Carolina.
It appears at least some of the women’s team’s mojo has finally rubbed off on the men’s program, as Martin and his crew were the darlings of the men’s tournament this year after reaching the Final Four for the first time. The men fell 77-73 to Gonzaga on April 1 in a game that came down to the final moments.
I also believe the USC women’s national title — and Columbia and the state’s jubilant reaction to it — holds vast socio-political significance. Here, in the heart of the Deep South, we have a team comprised completely of African-American women, coached by an African-American woman, playing basketball two blocks from a State House where the Confederate flag just came down less than two years ago … and these women are beloved. Absolutely and completely beloved.
They will parade through the streets of the Capital City on a Sunday afternoon, and we will laugh and cry and rain down upon them words of joy and adulation. That’s powerful stuff.
You also can’t understate what it means to all the young ladies who play youth sports throughout South Carolina who have now seen, with their own eyes, the heights to which they can ascend on the court or field. I have an 8-year-old daughter, Charley, and she’s a soccer player. And she loves going with me to see the women’s hoops team play. All-American forward A’ja Wilson is her favorite player (of course), in part because of her incredible skill, but also because Charley says she likes A’ja’s “high ponytail.”
Charley watched the national title game with my wife (I was driving back from the airport after attending the men’s Final Four, banging my fist on the steering wheel as I listened to the excruciatingly tense radio broadcast) and, whenever the game got too tight, my wife would turn the channel out of nervousness, only flipping it back after Charley begged her to.
Do you know what it means for means for my daughter — for your daughters — to watch this team? To see these incredible women play the game with tenacity and selflessness and smarts and verve and uncommon joy? It’s a beautiful thing to see. I wouldn’t trade this team for anything.
And so, the USC women find themselves atop the college hoops mountain. With a number of key players — including Wilson, Tyasha Harris and Bianca Cuevas-Moore — set to return next season, some will inevitably begin to think of back-to-back championships.
But we can worry about all that later. For now, let’s keep the party going. I’ll see you downtown at 3 on Sunday. I love a good parade, don’t you?
