Dawn Staley gives brutally honest grade for South Carolina's ugly loss to UConn

02/16/2025 05:35 PM

South Carolina and UConn came together to play one of the biggest women’s basketball non-conference matchups of the season, and it looked like only one team showed up. South Carolina took an 87-58 loss, as they only led one time during the game and had their 71-game home win streak snapped.

After the game, head coach Dawn Staley was honest about her team’s performance and how she would grade the way they played.

“How would Dawn Staley grade South Carolina’s effort vs UConn? ‘F’ she tells me,” South Carolina reporter wrote Lulu Kesin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

South Carolina was up 11-9 in the first quarter, and UConn went on a 12-3 after that to close out the quarter. The Gamecocks were then outscored 66-44 in the last three quarters, and they didn’t have an answer for anything that the Huskies threw at them.

“Dawn Staley says with a loss like this something is going on that doesn’t have to do with basketball and that they have to figure it out. But, Staley says they’re not going to change who they are, etc, no wholesale changes,” Kesin wrote.

Joyce Edwards led the way for South Carolina with 17 points and shot 7-for-10 from the field while also grabbing five rebounds and blocking two shots.

For UConn, it was Azzi Fudd who led the way, scoring 28 points and knocking 6 of her 10 threes. Paige Bueckers had a quiet day but joined Maya Moore and Diana Taurasi as the only three players in program history to record at least 2,000 points, 500 rebounds, and 500 assists in their careers. With their win, UConn snapped a four-game losing streak to South Carolina and a three-game losing streak to teams ranked in the top 10.

South Carolina will now look to regroup, and there’s no doubt that they’ll be able to bounce back from a loss like this.

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