Texas coach offers praise, respect for Dawn Staley, Gamecocks after loss to USC

Texas got popped. Not once, not twice, but three times.

That’s how Texas head coach Vic Schaefer summed up his team’s experience against South Carolina in Sunday’s top-5 heavyweight matchup. USC won 67-50.

“They were who I thought they were,” Schaefer said. “Their teams are always really, really tough. Their competitive spirit just oozes in the arena.”

No. 2 South Carolina (16-1, 4-0 SEC) has been running over opponents all year. Its one loss came on the road to No. 1 UCLA back in November. But with how “special” the Gamecocks played on Sunday, Schaefer struggled to comprehend the Gamecocks’ lone blemish on the season.

“I told Dawn I had no idea how they got beat at No. 1 UCLA,” Schaefer said. “And that’s a really good basketball team over there.”

If that’s not a compliment, what is?

The Gamecocks have greatly stepped their game up since that loss. They have won 11 straight games by an average of 31.5 points, including wins over No. 15 Iowa State, No. 8 Duke and No. 9 TCU.

And now No. 5 Texas.

“With our team, they seem to really focus in when there’s a number beside our opponent,” Staley said. “They practice a little better, and they’re more focused.”

It’s not like Texas didn’t play well, from a numbers standpoint at least. They had 28 more shots, due in part to grabbing 20 offensive boards, and forced a season-high 22 USC turnovers.

But shooting 27.8% from the field won’t win many games, even if you can make things that much harder for the other team.

“I thought we were really mentally weak today,” Schaefer said. “I was so disappointed. I looked out there sometimes, thinking, ‘Who is that?’ ”

Ouch.

Schaefer has been in plenty of battles over his 20-year head coaching career, but this one stung differently. He’s especially familiar with Staley, against whom he holds a lopsided 3-13 record. His last win came back in the 2018-19 season, when he was still at Mississippi State.

“When I play against her teams, they very rarely get outside of their bodies,” Schaefer said “They don’t get outside of their mind. They have a way they want to do things, and they do it.”

One thing Schaefer has gotten accustomed to with playing Staley-led teams is how they beat you mentally, not just on the scoreboard.

He utilized a variation of the word “tough” seven different times when talking about South Carolina. That toughness took Texas out of its comfort zone and made things tough from the start.

“We just went south in a hurry,” Schaefer said. “We did a lot of uncharacteristic things. But that’s what a team like that will do to you. It’s what we normally do to people.”

Texas had been a force of its own coming into Sunday, boasting a 16-1 record before the loss to USC. But Schaefer knew it would be tougher to compete against the defending national champions.

“My team has been really good up until today,” Schaefer said. “I don’t know what happened today. We talked about doing your job and being the thermostat, not the thermometer. Well, we ended up being the thermometer.”

Except they didn’t play so hot.

Schaefer is hoping to make Texas one of the perennial powerhouses in women’s basketball like South Carolina. But in order to do that, he wants to see his team play with more of an edge — also like USC.

That edge is what separates teams like USC from the rest of the pack. Those top programs stay at the top of the totem pole.

“Those teams have the it factor,” Schaefer said. “They play with an edge, with an attitude of the dog gets the bone. And we didn’t play with that edge today, and I have no idea why.”