It's hard to imagine the South Carolina women's basketball program without head coach Dawn Staley. Since her hiring in 2008, the Gamecocks have won three national championships, and South Carolina is making a sixth consecutive trip to the Final Four on Friday night.
Across her 20 seasons as South Carolina's head coach, she has cemented herself as one of the most dominant figures in women's college basketball.
But apparently Staley becoming South Carolina's head coach in 2008 almost didn't happen. In fact, former USC athletic director Eric Hyman apparently wanted to hire former North Carolina women's coach Sylvia Hatchell first and foremost.
In a recent interview ESPN reporter Debbie Antonelli had with USA Today Sports, Hatchell told Antonelli that the longtime Tar Heels coach was at the top of Hyman's list initially in 2008.
“I was offered the job,” Hatchell told Antonelli in 2024 during an interview. “But I just stayed (at North Carolina). Dawn has done a great job. I was offered the (South Carolina) job twice.”
Here's more, via USA Today's reporting:
"While Hatchell was the oldest among the candidates, she was also the most proven as the only one to win a national championship as a head coach. She was also beloved and respected in the South Carolina basketball community from her long and successful tenure at Division II Francis Marion, where she won national titles at the AIAW and NAIA levels in the 1980s. And she had won in Chapel Hill by recruiting players from the Carolinas, from Charlotte Smith to Latta.
"In the days after the report about the meeting between Hatchell and the Gamecocks in Myrtle Beach, UNC athletic director Dick Baddour put on the full-court press to keep his national championship-winning coach.
Ultimately, Hatchell turned the job down, and ended up using the South Carolina offer as leverage for a pay raise of $330,000 in base salary. The head coach stayed in Chapel Hill through the 2019 season, winning a national title with the Tar Heels in 1994, and bringing two other teams to the Final Four. "
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Although she finished her career with a 1,023-405 overall record, her legacy was a bit overshadowed with her resignation in April 2019 amid accusations of making racially insensitive remarks and making players play while injured.
The report adds that Hyman was also considering Staley, in addition to Chattanooga head coach Wes Moore and former Tennessee head coach Holly Warlick, who was a longtime assistant of Pat Summitt at the time.
Instead of landing either of the other three candidates, Staley has turned South Carolina into a powerhouse, and the Gamecocks have consistently competed for national titles throughout her tenure. I think it's safe to say Hyman ending up going with the Philadelphia, Pa. native was the right call.