Dawn Staley reacts: What South Carolina’s coach said about loss to UCLA

Top-ranked South Carolina women’s basketball (5-1) experienced its first loss Sunday after 43 consecutive victories. Afterward, head coach Dawn Staley maintained a philosophical perspective.

“This is what we usually do to teams,” Staley said after the Gamecocks’ 77-62 loss to fifth-ranked UCLA, which led by as many as 23 points. “It doesn’t feel good when you’re on the receiving end of it.

“But you also know you got beat by a great team. That was beautiful basketball by UCLA, beautiful on both sides. It was fluid on both sides of the ball.”

For Staley, the season-long problem of inconsistent concentration never became a problem against the Bruins.

“They were locked into it,” she said of her players. “I thought we had really, really good prep days. Felt good about it yesterday, our last prep day for it. Our players can focus in on a game like this. It’s the other games, the ones that don’t have a number next to the team, where sometimes we get a little unfocused.

“But you know, taking a loss will help us focus on anybody that we play.”

Nevertheless, Staley believed the loss reflected the team’s ongoing adjustment to the loss of 6-foot-7 Kamilla Cardoso, USC’s leading scorer and rebounder last season. In helping the Gamecocks win the national championship in April, Cardoso was named a second-team All American and the NCAA Tournament’s most outstanding player.

“We’re in transition from having a dominant big to not having a dominant big, and figuring out how we can incorporate our bigs (into) scoring the basketball,” Staley said. “We’ve got to get comfortable with it. Our bigs have to get comfortable with doing it a little bit differently. Obviously our shot selection is something that we are dealing with on a daily basis. We’ll figure it out.”

UCLA (5-0) shot 47.5% from the floor and 47.6% from 3-point range.

“I didn’t anticipate them shooting the way they shot the basketball,” Staley said. “I thought our kids fought, but we ran into a buzzsaw today. ...

“We told our team this is our second loss in two years. No it doesn’t feel good, but yes we have to figure things out. And we will.”

Despite the loss, Staley said “some really good stuff” came out of the game.

One positive aspect was the play of sophomore guard Tessa Johnson, who finished with 14 points — one under her season high — in her second game since returning to the lineup following an injury.

“Tessa’s a player,” Staley said. “She knocked down some 3s for us to get us a little bit of momentum, but we needed a lot more than Tessa today. But I’m proud of Tessa. Tessa is going to have an extraordinary career for us, and I look forward to helping her continue to develop.”