PHOENIX — Dawn Staley watched the final minutes of the game sitting down. There was nothing to see by standing and nothing to work out by pacing. It was an uncomfortable spot for the decorated coach. South Carolina’s impending loss was not a matter of play-calling or shotmaking or wishcasting. This one was only a matter of time.
South Carolina never led in the national championship against UCLA on Sunday. The Gamecocks were down by 13 at halftime and down by far more for most of the second half: Their 79–51 loss somehow felt even bleaker than its score implied. South Carolina had one of the worst offensive performances ever recorded in a title game and one of the worst in any game, period, for the program in its nearly two decades under Staley. It was a display of force by UCLA. But it was also a remarkable display of the opposite by South Carolina.
“Every 50-50 ball went their way,” said Gamecocks senior transfer guard Ta’Niya Latson. “Every rebound. They got second-, third- and fourth-chance points. We didn’t do the little things. We didn’t do the intangibles.”
Latson’s summary was apt. There were certainly a few specific points of distinction here: UCLA had the best player on the floor in 6'7" Lauren Betts and the hottest shooter in Gabriela Jaquez. It was better on the glass and in transition. The Bruins shot better in the paint, from midrange and beyond the arc. But there was no massive talent gap here or clear singular weakness. South Carolina had been favored to win this one. Instead, UCLA did almost every last one of the little things, and South Carolina did almost none of them.
It means that for a second consecutive year, South Carolina has not just lost in the national championship game but lost remarkably, gut-wrenchingly badly.
“We knew we wanted it,” said Gamecocks junior guard Tessa Johnson, who led the team in scoring with 14 points. “But I guess we didn’t show it out there as much as we thought we wanted it.”
South Carolina was outshot, outhustled and outrebounded. In a rare instance for Staley, the Gamecocks also looked outcoached: UCLA made adjustments, particularly on the offensive end, while South Carolina did not. The Gamecocks shot 18 for 62—29% from the floor. (And even that was heavily aided by an easygoing fourth quarter after the outcome was already clear, with South Carolina scoring 19 points for its best period of the afternoon as UCLA put in its subs. The Gamecocks spent much of the day shooting below 25%.) There was simply no sense of rhythm for South Carolina.
“We just didn’t have it today,” Staley said. “We tried, but we just didn't have it today.”
That was all the more shocking because of how this program remade itself following its loss in the national championship last year. After South Carolina lost to UConn, 82–59, in the 2025 title game, Staley & Co. headed to the transfer portal to get exactly what they had been missing in that blowout. They needed a player who could be a breakdown scorer, so they got Latson, who led Division I in scoring last year at Florida State. They needed more size, so they got 6'6" Madina Okot, who helped bolster their presence in the paint. And they overhauled much of what they had been running with their existing players.
This was the highest-scoring offense that Staley had ever run with the Gamecocks. (They averaged 85.6 points per game—more than a six-point improvement year-over-year.) This was the most efficient they had ever been, entering Sunday with a field goal percentage above 50%, making more shots than they missed for the first time. They improved their distance shooting and their ball movement. This was a more fluid offense, with more balanced options, designed in many ways specifically to ensure it would not be in position for another beatdown like the one it suffered last year to UConn.
South Carolina did, of course, step up and beat UConn when given the chance in the Final Four. But its offense sputtered and spun out in an even worse championship blowout than what it experienced last year. The Gamecocks alternately rushed their shots and hesitated on them. That was a credit to UCLA, of course, and to the game-changing presence and size of Betts. “You can’t go in there thinking you can score over her or through her,” Staley said. “So sometimes you have to go in there and draw and kick, maybe draw and kick another time.” The Gamecocks did not do that. But they faltered even when Betts was not on the floor. UCLA locked South Carolina down on the perimeter just as much as it did in the paint.
The Gamecocks spent last summer and fall thinking about how they had ended things in the spring. When the players got back in the gym, they were greeted by television screens displaying that ugly final championship score, 82–59, a touch from sports performance coach Molly Binetti. “We were like, Molly, O.K., that game been over. Can you take this off the board?” Gamecocks senior Raven Johnson said earlier this weekend. “She was like, No. Everybody was getting mad.” South Carolina’s summer workouts under Binetti are famously hard. These were harder than usual. There are 2,027 miles between Columbia, S.C., and Phoenix, and Binetti tied all of their workouts and group biking distances into that number. If they wanted to make it back to the Final Four and give themselves a chance at revenge, they needed to be tougher, stronger, faster. Everything was pointed at the emotion of that loss. Binetti and the Gamecocks staff wanted to tap into that frustration and embarrassment and channel it into something productive.
And now they find themselves back where they were last summer, facing a similar frustration and embarrassment, tasked with figuring out how to use it.
The 2025 championship forced plenty of changes. But they were not enough. And the ’26 championship may now invite more.
Staley has been the most successful coach in the game this decade. There is no school that has experienced anything close to the recent glory of South Carolina. That changes the expectations for a program: “We feel the pressure anytime we lose a basketball game,” Staley said. “I mean, everyone goes crazy when we lose one basketball game.” And like any tough competitor, Staley can hold on to those losses just as tightly as she does the wins. The coach was asked earlier this weekend about playing in the championship game for the fifth time in six years. She began her answer by saying how deeply “haunted” she was by that sixth year. This one may prove haunting in time. But it seems too obvious right now to be hiding any ghosts. It was simple, beginning to end, and Staley and her players appeared to see it as such.
UCLA looked much, much better and played much harder than South Carolina. “Obviously, we got smacked today,” Staley said. “We got to figure out how we smack back.” She just spent a year trying to figure that out. And now South Carolina will spend another year doing it again.
More March Madness from Sports Illustrated
- The Loyalists: Alex Karaban and Will Tschetter, Rare One-School Seniors, Face Off in UConn-Michigan Title Clash
- SI:AM | UCLA Leaves No Doubt in National Title Blowout vs. South Carolina
- After a Hard Reset, UCLA Decided to Win a National Championship on Its Own Terms
- Why Three UCLA Players Danced to Tate McRae After Winning National Championship
This article was originally published on www.si.com as ‘We Got Smacked’: South Carolina Couldn’t Do Anything Right in the National Championship.
