CLEVELAND — Dawn Staley knows what the stat sheet says. 

According to the numbers, the top-seeded South Carolina Gamecocks are undefeated in the 2023-24 season, having been perfect in 37 games heading into their final contest, a rematch with Iowa which will be played Sunday with a national championship on the line. 

But Staley, in her 16th year with the program, isn’t totally sure it’s true.

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Staley said. “We’ve played some bad basketball this season that made it feel like we lost.” 

Imagine what the actual losing teams feel like.

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In the history of the women’s NCAA Tournament, there have been nine undefeated champions. If South Carolina beats Iowa, the Gamecocks will become the 10th. 

The most recent came in 2015-16, Breanna Stewart’s senior year, when one of the greatest women’s players of all time — maybe the greatest ever at the collegiate level, given her résumé — led UConn to a perfect 38-0. Two years prior, she and the Huskies went 40-0. Before that, Baylor and Brittney Griner won the Bears’ second title, also going 40-0 in 2011-12. (No team has gone undefeated playing more than 40 games in a season.) 

Many South Carolina players were watching women’s hoops in those years, some casually and others loyally. 

“I did like Baylor a lot, I really liked Brittney Griner, I thought it was so cool that she could dunk,” said Bree Hall, a 6-foot junior guard for the Gamecocks. “I do remember Baylor and their undefeated season.” 

Raven Johnson, whose journey from nonthreat to knock-down shooter has been closely chronicled during this Final Four, had a few favorite players growing up: Chelsea Gray, Jackie Young, Arike Ogunbowale, Crystal Dangerfield. And while Johnson’s not a forward like Stewart, the former UConn All-American who won four consecutive championships, she couldn’t help but draw inspiration from Stewart’s run because “that was history right there.” 

When Hall arrived in Columbia two years ago from Dayton, Ohio, she made her goals clear: She wanted at least one ring, maybe more. And while going undefeated wasn’t necessarily on the to-do list, it was important to be part of a dominant team. 

“I was more big on winning a national championship,” Hall said. Then she gave a wry smile. “But I didn’t want (to) lose at all.”

It’s nearly impossible to rank undefeated champions in the women’s game given the different eras each came from. The first was 1985-86, when Texas went 34-0 on the way to its first and only NCAA title. Of the nine undefeated seasons in women’s college hoops, UConn owns six, a testament to the Huskies’ superiority when parity was practically non-existent in Division I, especially at the highest levels.

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That’s part of what makes South Carolina’s run this season so impressive. There’s more balance than ever in the game, and it’s increasing at a rapid rate. Upsets are becoming more routine in the women’s tournament and in the last few years, a handful of schools have made it to their first Final Four in program history — Virginia Tech in 2023, Arizona in 2021, Oregon in 2019. Since UConn’s title win in 2016, five different schools have won national titles, two of them for the first time (South Carolina in 2017, LSU in 2023). 

And given how much better women’s basketball is across the country than it was even 10 years ago, and how many more schools are investing in their programs, it’s hard to imagine a stretch like we’ve had in the past, when UConn won nine titles in 15 years and Tennessee took home six in 12 years.

That reality is surely why Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said of the Gamecocks, “this may be the best women’s team we’ve (ever) seen.” 

Staley and her program, Bluder said, have become the measuring stick in women’s basketball. 

“She’s setting the bar,” Bluder said. “For awhile it was Pat (Summitt), then it was Geno (Auriemma) and now it’s Dawn. You have to have somebody set the bar, and she’s doing it for us.” 

What’s more, most people didn’t expect South Carolina to contend for a national title this year after losing Aliyah Boston, the top pick in the 2023 WNBA Draft. The Gamecocks were picked No. 4 in the preseason USA TODAY Coaches Poll, but many believed LSU, with its loaded freshman class and experienced transfer portal pick-ups, was a shoo-in for another Final Four run, if not another title. 

Then South Carolina served notice the first game of the season that the Gamecocks were out for revenge, blowing out then-No. 10 Notre Dame 100-71 in Paris. They’ve been on a tear ever since, even if Staley struggles with the reality of that. 

“It’s really hard to believe that we’re undefeated, because I don’t feel it,” Staley said. “As a coaching staff, we have to pinch ourselves to even know that’s true, because deep down, we see what our shortcomings are every single day.” 

But if the Gamecocks top Iowa, the stat sheet will show no shortcomings, and instead 38 great days of basketball for the University of South Carolina. 

And at least in this case, numbers won’t lie. 

Email Lindsay Schnell at [email protected] or follow her on social media @Lindsay_Schnell