TAMPA, Fla. — Once again, South Carolina is playing in a national championship game. And once again, head coach Dawn Staley is fielding questions about the impending legacy of an opposing star’s elusive title while her program chases its own history.
“I can't not address it because it's happening,” Staley said on Saturday. “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, because it's hard. It's hard. We find ourselves back here in a similar situation.”
The national title game on Sunday (3 p.m. ET, ABC) will be UConn guard Paige Bueckers’ final collegiate game before entering the WNBA Draft, where she’s projected to go No. 1 to the Dallas Wings, as well as the culmination of a historically successful South Carolina class. The push-and-pull of dueling legacies adds a lift to the emerging rivalry.
Bueckers, the former No. 1 recruit and “generational talent” coming out of high school, imagined four titles in four years, matching Huskies great Breanna Stewart. Instead, injuries marred her and UConn’s half-decade to leave 40 minutes between her and one single ring. It would be the program’s first since Stewart’s run ended in 2016.
“There's a sentimental narrative about Paige,” Staley said. “A great freakin' player. Anybody would start their franchise with Paige because of her efficient way of playing, because she's a winner, because she cerebrally just knows the game, just has an aura about her."
A year ago, questions rained down about Clark, the all-time leading scorer who led Iowa to back-to-back Final Fours. It was a storyline loaded in sentimentality ...
