Dawn Staley Continues To Cements Status

South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley continues to add onto her legendary resumé by defeating the best coaches in the history of the sport.

Dawn Staley is a sports figure these days who, when objectively broken down based on her coaching acumen, is rarely questioned. Everyone at this point can agree that what the Philadelphia native has done in building South Carolina's women's basketball program up to the best program in their respective sport is historic in and of itself.

There's one aspect, however, of the rise and subsequent arrival of Dawn Staley on the national stage as a women's college basketball coach that hasn't garnered nearly enough attention, and that's how she's performed against some of the greatest women's basketball coaches to have ever graced the hardwood. In the past sixteen months, Staley has gone 7-0 against hall-of-fame coaches in UConn's Geno Auriemma, LSU's Kim Mulkey, and Stanford's Tara Vanderveer, who have won a combined 2,964 games in their careers.

The most impressive part is that Dawn and the Gamecocks haven't just won on their home court. They've won five of these contests on their opponent's home floor or at a neutral site venue. This gives even more credence to the notion that there's been a changing of the guard in terms of not just who the best team is in the sport but also the best coach, and right now, there's absolutely no question the best coach is Dawn Staley.

When it comes to conversations like this, the details usually get muddied regarding how much weight should be put on past success versus present success, with a certain contingent believing that putting Dawn at the top completely discounts the other coaches, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. The greatness of coaches like Auriemma, Vanderveer, and Mulkey should and always will be acknowledged by both the media and fans. Still, regarding the phrase "what have you done for me lately," recent results matter to a certain extent.

Suppose, in a hypothetical world, Staley and the South Carolina Gamecocks win the national championship in April. In that case, she will have won three of the past six national championships in the sport, with Geno, Tara, and Kim combined two titles in that same span. Some people try to seek out the next best thing far too quickly when it comes to sports, but in women's college basketball, Staley has and continues to prove herself time and time again against the very best.

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