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After South Carolina defeated UConn to win their second NCAA women’s basketball title, Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley sought to clarify controversy about her team allegedly boycotting the national anthem.
Before Friday’s semifinal game against Louisville, South Carolina was not out on the court for the anthem. A number of stories were written about it, on sites such as Insider, Daily Mail and OutKick. While Staley has previously spoken about her team’s decision to sit or kneel for the anthem, she said that the team staying in the locker room on Friday was a result of the timing of when it was played — and not a deliberate protest.
“I don’t know who wrote an article about our players not being out on the court for the national anthem,” Staley told reporters Sunday night. “We’re just creatures of habit. I think it was played at the 12- or 10-minute mark [on the countdown clock before the game started]. That’s just not the time that we’re out on the court because of our pregame ritual. If the national anthem is at triple 0’s like it was today, we were out there standing for the national anthem.”
Staley called on journalists to fact-check, and said her team was called names over not being out on the court for the anthem against Louisville.
“So whoever this journalist was that wrote that, please do your research,” Staley said. “Ask the questions before you go out and write an article. And then I’m called all kinds of names. Our players are called all kinds of names. Before you do that, please fact check. And don’t put us under the gun like that because it was a distraction for us. I didn’t let it be a distraction but it was a distraction. People were all on my accounts and all of that.
“And I can take the heat. But when you write something and it’s during one of the most important times of our season, let it be factual. I think we can come up with a whole lot of things you can write about our basketball team during this time than one that was full of untruths. And then other articles come out from that. And then we’re called unpatriotic, some of the nastiness. It’s because we’re a predominantly black team. So when you do that, understand your power. If it’s facts, I can’t fight that. But they were full of untruths.”
Last year, Staley spoke to ESPN’s Undefeated (now rebranded to Andscape) about Gamecocks players choosing to sit during the national anthem to protest racial injustice in America.
“The majority of our players has sat during the playing of the national anthem every game this season – a decision made by our players to bring awareness to racial injustice in our country,” Staley said last January. “If opposing teams choose to play the anthem during the time we’re in the locker room, then we choose to stay in the locker room.”
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