South Carolina Basketball: Dawn Staley named Naismith National Coach of the Year finalist

South Carolina basketball coach Dawn Staley continues to separate herself and her program at the top of the sport of women's college basketball.

Despite expectations that the Gamecocks would be "rebuilding" during the 2023-2024 season, Staley has led her program to a dominant and undefeated season thus far. USC became the first SEC team ever to go undefeated in the regular season in back-to-back seasons. They won their 8th regular season SEC title in the last 11 years and their 8th SEC Tournament championship in the past 10 seasons.

Staley was honored as the SEC Coach of the Year by the league's coaches, and The Athletic, the USBWA (United States Basketball Writers Association), ESPN, and the Sporting News all have named the Gamecock coach as the National Coach of the Year.

On Monday, it was announced that she would have a chance to bring home another major trophy as Coach Staley was named one of four finalists for the Naismith National Coach of the Year Award. She was joined as a finalist by Lisa Bluder (Iowa Hawkeyes), Tara VanDerveer (Stanford Cardinal), and Lindsay Gotlieb (Southern Cal Trojans).

South Carolina, Iowa, and Stanford all were preseason top-10 teams (even if many thought the Gamecocks would fall out of that tier of teams), so only Southern Cal's Lindsay Gotlieb oversaw her team move drastically in the rankings this year.

However, the Gamecocks went from being considered overrated in the preseason to being the undisputed best team in the country just one week into the season. The strong play continued for the Gamecocks, and after smacking Presbyterian and North Carolina in the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament, the college basketball world views Carolina as the clear favorite to win the national title.

Dawn Staley is the coach of the year, and the Atlanta Tipoff Club (the organization that gives out the Naismith Awards) should recognize that fact.

Fans can play a role in the decision-making process by voting for Coach Staley at naismithfanvote.com or by voting on Twitter/X on the @NaismithAwards, @MarchMadness, or @MarchMadnessWBB pages.