Dawn Staley Talks Challenge Of Playing Auburn In Neville Arena

South Carolina's women's basketball team will be in a proverbial hornets nest when they take on the Auburn Tigers tomorrow.

Coming into this season, the conference opponents that South Carolina women's basketball fans were primarily worried about were the LSU Tigers and the Ole Miss Rebels, and to a certain extent, the Tennessee Lady Vols and the Mississippi State Bulldogs. However, Gamecock fans shouldn't overlook the team's upcoming matchup against the Auburn Tigers.

While the Tigers might currently be behind all of the aforementioned SEC teams in the standings, they have proven to be an improved team this season, most notably on the defensive end, and are already two wins away from matching their conference win total from last season.

"[Auburn's a] really good team [that's] playing extremely well," Dawn Staley said about Auburn on Wednesday after her team's practice. "I think they got their first back-to-back SEC wins [just recently] - [We'll face] a range of defenses. [They'll] pressure you in the full court, [and] in the half court. They're pretty aggressive. I think they're a typical SEC team, and then playing them on the road will be especially hard."

Kamilla Cardoso taking on a triple team from the Auburn Tigers last season (5th Jan., 2023) / Jeff Blake | USA Today Network

That latter statement shouldn't be brushed aside by the South Carolina faithful, as Auburn knocked off No. 7 LSU earlier this month, holding the other Tigers to their lowest single-game point total of the season in the process (62 points). Johnnie Harris' squad will come into tomorrow night's matchup confident that they can pull off what no SEC has been able to accomplish in 22.5 calendar months: beat the Gamecocks.

Dawn knows that the environment will be raucous but also believes that her team will be ready for the environment.

"I mean, it's a range. It's anywhere from LSU to Utah to Florida. I mean everybody that we've played, we probably drew a lot of fans there. So I think we'll be okay when it comes to just handling that environment. It's just more so [about] us and us being able to exhibit our habits for 40 minutes."

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