On Sunday, the South Carolina Gamecocks will play the UConn Huskies in the 2025 women’s basketball national championship game.
For Dawn Staley’s USC, it will be a chance to win back-to-back national titles and their third championship in four seasons.
Much like last season with Iowa Hawkeyes phenom Caitlin Clark, there’s a sense that more attention is paid to the team South Carolina is playing rather than their impressive run. You could make the case that the narrative around UConn guard Paige Bueckers and her quest to win a national championship drives much of the media coverage.
“Sometimes we create these narratives about great players — Caitlin was one of them; Paige is one of them right now — and we tend to forget the narrative about what our kids have been able to do, going for their third in four years,” Staley told the media on Saturday. “There’s a sentimental narrative about Paige. A great freakin’ player. Anybody would start their franchise with Paige because she’s a winner. … But when you put a narrative out there, everybody sees that, and it puts us at a disadvantage, whether you want to believe so or not. Officials see it. It’s all over TikTok. It’s all over ‘SportsCenter.’ It’s all over all of that.
“I just want to put it out there. I can’t not address it because it’s happening. It happened to us last year. Everything was about Caitlin Clark and her legacy and her ability to win a national championship. Yet we were coming into this thing undefeated, doing something that’s unprecedented at the time. We find ourselves back here in a similar situation.”
Those quotes are included in an ESPN article by Andrea Adelson, which the ESPN Women’s Hoops X account shared on Saturday afternoon.
“Dawn Staley says narrative around Paige Bueckers and her quest to win a title has overshadowed South Carolina’s feats,” reads the post with a link attached to the article.
Staley noticed the social media post about an hour later and was not pleased with the framing, writing, “LIES! Fix your headline, please!”
Presumably, Staley is taking issue with the framing that she said the narratives around Bueckers overshadow South Carolina. After going back and reading all the quotes, I think it’s a bit of a nitpick in either direction. Staley didn’t say those exact words, but she heavily implied the sentiment. She is more specifically talking about the existing narratives and the desire to see both teams get the spotlight. Still, you can certainly read her comments as a feeling that her team is getting the short shrift despite being 35-3 and the defending champion.
Of course, there’s one way to settle this narrative discussion once and for all, and it’s the same way her Gamecocks settled it last season. She and her team will get that chance on Sunday.