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South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley won her second championship Sunday night when the Gamecocks defeated UConn 64-49.
Staley and South Carolina endured some heat after Friday’s Final Four win over Louisville because the team wasn’t on the floor for the national anthem. She said it was just a timing issue.
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Head Coach Dawn Staley of the South Carolina Gamecocks holds up the national championship title after defeating the UConn Huskies 64-49 on April 3, 2022 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
The team was grounded for “The Star-Spangled Banner” ahead of Sunday’s tip-off.
“I don’t know who wrote an article about our players not being on the pitch for the national anthem. We’re just creatures of habit, creatures of habit. I think the national anthem was played on the 12th or 10th. minute, and that’s just not the time we’re on the pitch for our pre-game ritual,” Staley said. “When the national anthem comes out like it’s 12:00 a.m. today, we were out there standing for the national anthem.
“Whoever that person, the journalist who wrote this, please do your research, ask the questions before you go out and write an article, and then I’ll be called by all kinds of names, our players will be called by all kinds of names . Before If you do, please check the facts and don’t pressure us like that because it was a distraction for us. I didn’t let it become a distraction, but it was a distraction.
South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley answers questions after a win over the Connecticut Huskies April 3, 2022 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Evert Nelson/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
“People were on all my accounts and all of that. I can take the heat. But if you’re writing something and it’s during one of the most important times of our season, let it be factual. Let it be factual.
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“I think we could come up with a lot of other things to write about our basketball team at this time than writing something that’s full of untruths. Called unpatriotic, we’re called – some of the nastiness, and that’s because we’re a predominantly black team.
“So if you do that, you understand your power, and if it’s facts, I can’t fight that. But they were full of untruths.”
UConn’s Caroline Ducharme attempts to get past Aliyah Boston of South Carolina on Sunday, April 3, 2022 in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Staley’s team has stayed in the locker room during the anthem or protested in some form since the middle of the 2020-21 college basketball season. She told Andscape at the time that the players sat during the national anthem in almost every game that season to “raise awareness of racial injustice in our country.”
“If opposing teams play the anthem while we’re in the dressing room, then we choose to stay in the dressing room,” she said.
Staley added: “I love our country too. I don’t like what our country has achieved or what our country has been, but I would like to believe that there are people in our country who will lead us in more unified ways than in divisive ways, and that’s what I’m here for.”
According to insiders, most teams also stayed in the locker room until Louisville came out.
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Some Cardinals players wore jerseys with the Adidas logo on the back: “No one in the United States shall be disqualified from participating in, denied the benefits of, or discriminated against in any federally funded program or activity because of sex.”