South Carolina beat Tennessee on an electric buzzer-beater during the SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament on Saturday evening. Head coach Dawn Staley dialed-up a completely unexpected inbounds play with 1.1 seconds left on the clock that could not have worked any better.
Star center Kamilla Cardoso made the first three-pointer of her career for the win.
Although the Volunteers head coach Kellie Harper failed her team by choosing not to play defense, the brilliant play call cannot go understated. Nobody expected Cardoso to pull up from beyond the arc and she knocked down a difficult shot in a big pressure spot.
Staley deserves a lot of credit here!
Her ability to call Xs and Os, for some reason, have been called into question throughout her coaching career. This should silence all of the haters.
South Carolina did not have a timeout prior to the final sequence. Dawn Staley had to build the plan on the fly and was very subtle in doing so.
If you watch her before the play, she explicitly and obviously told Cardoso to move up to the foul line, where she would catch the ball and throw a quick pass to Te-Hina Paopao in the corner. And then, right before the inbound, she secretly gave her best player the green light to pull the trigger with a wink.
You can see Dawn Staley making the final play (with no timeouts). She told Cardoso to move up to the foul line and pass to Paopao in the corner. But, right before the inbound, she gives Cardoso the green light to shoot it pic.twitter.com/SRWJTRzBLR
— Nato Jacobs (@dcmadness202) March 9, 2024
Staley made the right decision to trust her big from downtown. It worked. South Carolina advanced to the SEC Championship.
Very few coaches would give their 6-foot-7 the ball in that scenario. Even if the defense was as flawed as Tennessee. Kamilla Cardoso had attempted just one three-point shot in her career prior to Saturday, as a freshman. She missed. The buzzer-beater was just the second three-point attempt of her four legendary years with the Gamecocks. It helped to further solidify her women’s college basketball career as one of the best in school history.
What a moment! What a play call!