Gamecocks assistant Lisa Boyer is Dawn Staley’s ride or die — and a program legend

Lisa Boyer didn’t make the 3-pointer.

But she certainly gets an assist.

It was March 9, and the No. 1 South Carolina women’s basketball team was in big trouble against Tennessee in the SEC Tournament semifinals. USC led by as many as 23 in the second quarter but now trailed by two points with 1.1 seconds left.

With no timeouts remaining, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley scrambled and called an inbounds play designed to get guard Te-Hina Paopao an open look. Scratch that, she thought. There wasn’t enough time for a hand-off. She turned instead to Kamilla Cardoso, her 6-foot-7 center.

“Shoot it,” Staley said.

Thousands of people saw what happened next: Cardoso banked in a game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer — the first made three of her four-year college career on her second ever attempt from beyond the arc — to keep USC undefeated and send the Gamecocks back to the SEC championship game.

But few people saw what had been happening over the past three seasons to get Cardoso to that point: the shooting contests, expertly run by associate head coach Boyer, that South Carolina’s post players participate in after shootaround on every game day, giving Cardoso dozens of reps on mid-range jumpers and top of the key 3-pointers.

You’ll never guess where she stood for her shot against Tennessee.

“Boyer, I don’t even have words to describe her,” Cardoso told The State. “She’s an amazing coach. She’s gonna make sure you work hard and get better each and every day on the court and off the court. Just an amazing person. She’s hyping us up through it all.”

And her viral buzzer-beating 3-pointer to down the Vols?

“She had a big part in that,” Cardoso said. “Besides that workout with her, I don’t really shoot.”

Spend a few weeks with the South Carolina women’s basketball team, and you’ll hear Boyer stories galore, similar to that one from Cardoso.

A coaching veteran of 43 years who has also spent 22 years as Staley’s lead assistant coach at Temple and South Carolina, Boyer is a key cog in the Gamecocks women’s basketball machine that is marching into a fourth consecutive NCAA Final Four on Friday night in Cleveland, on the heels of a second straight undefeated regular season.

Players adore Boyer. Opponents respect her. Staley will make a good-natured dig at her long-time friend but emphasize in the same breath there’s “not a coach that works harder. Not one.”

And for Boyer, coaching remains a thrill.

“It’s a blessing to be able to do this as long as I’ve been able to,” she said.

Making it to Columbia

Considering she’s in her 16th season as a South Carolina assistant, Boyer laughs at the premise. But it’s true: 24 years ago, she had “no desire” to return to women’s college basketball.

Born and raised in Upstate New York, she’d played forward at Ithaca before earning a master’s in education and embarking on a coaching journey that included 10 years as the head coach at Bradley University in Illinois from 1986-1996 and stints at four other colleges.

Boyer, though, had also enjoyed her five years in professional basketball as a head coach in the now-defunct American Basketball League; as an assistant for the WNBA’s Cleveland Rockers; as and a trail-blazing volunteer assistant coach for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers during that same period (she was unpaid but still the first woman to hold such a position, 13 years before Becky Hammon did).

So when Staley — a star point guard who Boyer coached in the short-lived ABL — asked Boyer to join her coaching staff at Temple University in Philadelphia, she passed. Emphatically.

“I told her, ‘Hell no,’” Boyer said, laughing.

But Staley was persistent. Very persistent.

“This went on for, like, three years,” Boyer said. “I’m giving you the short version.”

Boyer finally relented and joined Staley’s staff in 2002, a bit wary to return to the college game but confident that Staley, who she’d watched closely as a college and pro player and knew as a “phenomenal” point guard, had the basketball IQ and leadership skills to thrive.

Boyer’s previous experience as a head coach also came in handy during her six years as Staley’s right-hand woman at Temple. Staley was still in her prime when Temple hired her at age 29 and kept on playing, making five WNBA All Star teams and winning an Olympic gold medal in her first six years coaching the Owls.

“She was at a point where she didn’t need me for coaching,” Boyer said. “She needed me for all the other stuff: Recruiting, organization, keeping the stuff going while she was away. When she was still playing, she was gone all summer.”

Under Staley, Temple promptly became an annual NCAA Tournament lock. Having previously coached at a Power Five and mid-major level, though, Boyer knew she and Staley had to eventually make a change to reach their ultimate goal of winning a national championship. That was a natural hope for Boyer and an even greater point of emphasis for the über-competitive Staley, who’d willed Virginia to three separate Final Fours and a national championship game in the 1990s but never won a title as a player.

“We loved our days at Temple, and I’m not taking anything away from Temple,” Boyer said. “But we needed something bigger.”

Enter South Carolina.

‘She’s my rider’

Remember how Boyer once insisted she was done with the college game?

Compare that mindset to this quote from her in 2015, when, following Selection Sunday, she’d spent two days on the road recruiting at a the national junior college tournament in Kansas, returned to Columbia, coached a Friday NCAA Tournament game against Savannah State, worked until 2:30 a.m. scouting USC’s next opponent (Syracuse), woke up at 7 a.m. Saturday to prep for a 10:30 a.m. film session and noon practice and essentially shrugged it off as part of the job.

“This is what you’ve got to do,” she told The State nine years ago. “You’ve got to push through. What in God’s creation could stop us from what we’ve got to do right now?”

Typical of her associate head coach, according to Staley, who was hired at South Carolina in May 2008 to replace Susan Walvius. Boyer was Staley’s first hire.

“When I want to not think about basketball, she’s always thinking about basketball,” Staley said of Boyer, adding: “I know I would not have been as successful without her expertise, her tirelessness, her — I mean, she thinks about every single thing.”

Two decades after she decided to once again go all in on coaching women’s college basketball, Boyer’s fingerprints are all over a South Carolina program that has risen to national prominence under Staley and is a staggering 107-3 the past three seasons, with five sell-outs of its 18,000-seat home arena this year alone.

For many years, Boyer worked directly with USC’s guards. More recently, she’s started working with the post players. Her relationships with players cover more than basketball. In 2012, guard Markeshia Grant said Boyer helped instill the confidence she needed to sink seven 3-pointers in what was then USC’s first ever win at Tennessee. Another former player, Ieasia Walker, credited Boyer for pulling some strings to help Walker get started in her career as a referee.

Boyer is a savvy coach with a genuine love and appreciation for basketball who’s always good for an in-game adjustment or a prescient drill (see Cardoso’s buzzer-beating 3). She’s also not afraid to be an enforcer. Many times this year, that’s required calling down the Gamecocks players “five, 10 times” per session for whispering among themselves while Staley is trying to talk during film review, according to USC guard Paopao.

“And we still don’t listen,” Paopao said, laughing.

Sitting next to Paopao, fellow guard Raven Johnson nodded in agreement.

“Boyer’s one of my favorite people to mess with,” she said.

That’s all in good fun, of course. But it speaks to a larger point about Boyer’s friendship with and protectiveness toward Staley, someone she’s seen evolve from a rookie coach into one of the faces of college women’s basketball who’s unafraid to speak her mind on any topic.

Staley joked that she and Boyer operate like an “old couple” who’ve both taken years off each other’s lives through various ticky-tacky arguments that feel silly the following day. But it’s “really satisfying and comforting,” she said, “to know that Boyer is right by my side.”

“If anybody says or does anything to me, watch out,” Staley said, a grin breaking out on her face. “I don’t have to say a word. Boyer will. Even if it’s one of us family members, Gamecocks, Boyer will come to the rescue. She’s my rider. She’s my rider all the way through.”

The joy of coaching

Standing outside South Carolina’s locker room in Albany, New York, last week, Boyer found herself reflecting on a car ride she took with Staley during Christmas break last December.

Last offseason, Gamecocks women’s basketball experienced a monumental changing of the guard after coming up two games short of a perfect season. USC went 36-1 in 2022-23 before losing to Iowa in the Final Four, and all five starters from that team — including program legend Aliyah Boston — and two more veterans departed for either the WNBA Draft or graduation.

It was a daunting rebuild. Even after assembling an impressive roster for the 2023-24 season, Staley revealed earlier this season on ESPN’s College Gameday that she seriously considered retirement after watching her new team struggle through its first few practices that summer.

Given the turnover and the uncertainty, few batted an eye when South Caroline debuted as the No. 6 team in the preseason AP Top 25. And now, in late December, after starting the season with a bang in Paris and taking care of non-conference business, the Gamecocks were … undefeated? The unanimous No. 1 team in the AP poll? Right back where they’d been?

“Do you believe we’re 11-0?” Boyer asked Staley.

“No,” Staley said. “How did that happen?”

And on it went. South Carolina went undefeated in the regular season again. Won the SEC regular season championship again. Won the SEC Tournament championship again. Was the No. 1 overall seed and entered the NCAA Tournament as the betting favorite to win it all again.

“Never in a million years did I see this,” said Boyer, who’s been part of 11 Sweet 16s, seven Elite Eights, six Final Fours and two national championships at USC.

“But they bring it.”

Despite its unblemished record, this year’s Gamecocks team has occasionally played with fire. Last weekend, they nearly blew double-digit second half leads to Indiana in the Sweet 16 and Oregon State in the Elite Eight. They ended up winning those games by a combined 16 points after winning their first two NCAA Tournament games the previous weekend by a combined 99.

Still, USC finds itself back on the same stage it has occupied for years during the Staley-Boyer tenure. (You might as well mesh the names together, since all of Staley’s on-court coaching accolades roll right on over to the résumé of Boyer, the lead assistant who has sat by Staley on the bench for all 544 of her games as South Carolina’s coach since her first on Nov. 16, 2008.)

Although this year’s team has plenty of traits of a Staley-coached team, including excellent rebounding and bench depth, the Gamecocks have impressively gone 36-0 with a generally younger, looser and less experienced group than previous seasons. They’re louder, too, with what guard Bree Hall jokingly described as “a different level of childishness. It’s ridiculous.”

Like running a day care, Staley has joked multiple times this year.

“These guys keep you on your toes,” Boyer said.

But that’s why Boyer, who’s coached over 40 seasons of basketball, keeps coming to this sport and her job, which could land her and Staley a third national championship in nine years by Sunday afternoon. Standing outside of South Carolina’s locker room in Albany, she considered a final question on that front: Does it ever get old? She nodded toward USC’s locker room and laughed.

“No,” Boyer said. “Did you see the energy in that room? They have not stopped talking.”

When it comes to coaching, neither has she.