Dawn Staley's gone and done it again at South Carolina, as Tennessee is latest victim

Oh, baby. Dawn Staley’s gone and done it again. She’s built another dogged, dynamic, determined South Carolina women’s basketball team, one too good to allow Kim Caldwell a storybook moment Monday night.

Caldwell returned to lead Tennessee one week after giving birth to her first child, and Lady Vols fans must have been giddy watching their 36-year-old coach stalk the sideline while her team raced to a nine-point lead as part of a first-quarter blitz that didn’t last.

No. 2 South Carolina withstood the opening onslaught, then asserted control in a 70-63 victory that continued the Gamecocks’ assault on the SEC.

The Gamecocks led by as many as 22 points before No. 17 Tennessee restored respectability with a furious fourth-quarter rally.

Even as Caldwell instills a promising culture at Tennessee, she lacks Staley’s roster.

Kim Caldwell, Lady Vols lack Dawn Staley's roster – at least for now

Caldwell's Lady Vols push the tempo. They steal possessions and fire away from distance, but, in Caldwell’s first season, she simply lacks the horses to keep up with Staley’s latest force.

By halftime, 10 Tennessee players had logged at least six minutes. Only four had scored. Each of those four is a transfer, a reflection of the depth to which the Lady Vols’ high school recruiting plummeted throughout the several years before Caldwell’s hire.

Predecessor Kellie Harper left Caldwell an appallingly insufficient crop of talent. Tennessee’s first-year coach works to change that.

Caldwell signed the nation’s No. 2-ranked recruiting class in November, complete with three McDonald’s All-America selections. Maybe, that points to a future in which the Lady Vols ascend to South Carolina’s level. That’s not the reality of the present.

In the short term, Caldwell patched holes with transfers, but restoring Tennessee to firm foundation calls for prep blue-chippers, the kind of players who’ve gravitated to Staley’s program for years.

Players like Joyce Edwards, South Carolina’s latest freshman phenom who cruises the paint with a veteran’s comfort. She poured in 18 points against Tennessee.

Joyce Edwards smooths South Carolina's wrinkles

The Gamecocks, balanced and deep though they are, miss Kamilla Cardoso playing the role of enforcer. A staple of South Carolina’s undefeated national championship team last season, Cardoso now thrives in the pros. Missed, too, is Ashlyn Watkins, the Gamecocks’ super sub out with a torn ACL.

Edwards, though, smooths the wrinkles of a team that keeps improving since a lopsided loss in November to now-No. 1 UCLA. Edwards played 29 minutes. As Staley put it afterward, perhaps that’s several minutes too few, because the freshman emerges as a star.

Edwards comes off the bench in support of 6-foot-3 forward Sania Feagin, who must play a lead role in Kim Mulkey’s nightmares after swatting away LSU on Friday, while the Gamecocks maintained dominance over a rival left looking up at South Carolina’s perch.

Mulkey exited town gobsmacked by Staley's latest assembly of talent.

"I don't know that I've ever coached against a team that has 10 McDonald's All-Americans on a roster," the LSU coaching legend said after a 10-point loss to the Gamecocks.

Unrelenting depth remains Staley's trump card, to the tune of South Carolina’s 38 bench points against Tennessee. The Gamecocks, in a display of another Staley staple, defend the 3-point arc like a hawk guarding her nest of hatchlings.

Tennessee at least rebounded better than LSU did while the Tigers invited South Carolina to own the glass during Friday’s top-10 clash, but the Lady Vols didn’t shoot much better than LSU.

Tennessee hoisted 26 3-pointers and made just three in a clank-a-palooza.

Caldwell said she had a difficult time watching on television while Tennessee lost at Texas last week, the only game she missed after giving birth to her 6-pound, 10-ounce baby boy, Conor.

The Lady Vols shot it better against the Longhorns, though, and seeing all those missed jumpers against South Carolina couldn’t have been much better in person.

Staley, in a nod to Caldwell’s speedy return after childbirth, quipped to reporters that “women have the strength of 10 men."

Nobody inside the SEC possesses South Carolina’s strength. Caldwell returned to the bench in time to get a look at what she's chasing.

Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dawn Staley, South Carolina keep Tennessee, Kim Caldwell chasing