South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley: We deserve to be the number one seed

South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley has been impressive, saying her team deserves to be the number one overall seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament, following a dominant run over the Southeastern Conference Tournament Route 64-45 No. 1 Texas Sunday’s Championship Game.

GameCocks (30-3), who won the national championship last season, took part in the SEC tournament, ranked fifth in the country. It is predicted to be the second species.

However, after slotting three league enemies by 18, 21 and 19 points, the No. 1 seed appears to be rock now.

But Staley thinks her team is making more money.

“If you win this tournament and play the schedule we play, I think we’re the overall seed of No. 1,” Staley said. “We built a schedule to put ourselves in this situation, so we hope that the committee doesn’t discount the entire resume. There’s no one in the country where we played the schedule we played. We won a regular season title, won this tournament and beat the number one team in the country.

She insisted that Gamecocks’ 2024-25 resume (including 12 wins against top 25 teams, including two against Texas) should count something. South Carolina boasts a 7-3 record against top 10 teams, with three losses against Texas, Connecticut No. 3 and No. 4 UCLA.

GameCocks’ 30-game regular-season schedule included 13 games against AP top 25 teams at the time of the game.

Staley said she was “shocked” to learn that her team was the second seed to appear in the tournament.

“If you’ve got so much credit for beating us, and yet we have the toughest stretch in the country and come out unharmed, you can’t discount it,” Staley said. “You can’t trust it. I’m going to talk about it because you have to hear the other side of the voice. If you don’t think the body of our work deserves it, you need to talk about it.”

She added: “We’ll fight for what our team has acquired.”

Report by Associated Press.

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