For the second consecutive season, South Carolina is the AP Preseason #1 team, but this season is different.

South Carolina has been a regular at the top of the polls, a preseason top five in six of the last eight seasons. The Gamecocks also finished the 2020 season ranked number one, and that led into being ranked number one last preseason. That ranking barely lasted two weeks before NC State handed South Carolina its first loss in over a year. South Carolina just happens to open the season at NC State this year.

“It’s cool, but we did it before,” Dawn Staley said. “We get a do-over. We get a do-over with the team that knocked us off from being number one last season. It’s good in that regard.”

The Gamecocks have been ranked number one 14 times in the last three seasons and 25 times overall. It’s a swell honor, but that’s it. Even during the 2017 national championship season the Gamecocks were never ranked number one.

What also matters is, as Staley likes to say, changing the narrative. It’s no secret certain teams and players get more favorable coverage. Witness the kerfuffle over Aliyah Boston’s recognition as an AP All-American (if you missed it, an unflattering picture of Boston was used in the announcement, while very flattering pictures of the other players were used. The blowback was enough that ESPN deleted a tweet and then changed the photo).

That slight - an unflattering photo when other players were represented with flattering pictures - is enough to fuel the Gamecocks’ fire.

“It’s great in another regard because we’re not the likeliest team to be named the number one team in the country because it doesn’t fit the national narrative,” Staley said. “I like it because it goes against what the decision-makers in our game choose to write that story and write that narrative.”

Clearly, Staley is referring to UConn, the 800-pound gorilla in the room of any discussion of women’s basketball.* The Huskies aren’t going anywhere, but the Gamecocks believe they should be held in the same regard.

That regard is championships and perfection. South Carolina doesn’t have the same number of titles as UConn, but the Gamecocks have the most recent one. And although they lost in the Final Four last season for a number of reasons, in the last seconds it was a pair of missed layups. Staley is harping on that tiny margin of error, insisting on perfection. She has that tiny margin for error as both a reminder and a motivator to make sure no one is satisfied by a preseason ranking.

“We’re in practice everyday and we see where our weaknesses are,” Staley said. “That checks itself. We communicate. We talk to our players. We watch film every day that we practice. They have individual film sessions with our assistant coaches. We see where our shortcomings are. It’s easy to keep them focused and on task when we know we fall short of our expectations every day, and that keeps us motivated to want to do better.”

*While part of me wants to say that South Carolina has obtained equal status, I keep thinking of how when Staley signed her historic contract extension The Athletic had its UConn beat writer (not a national writer) submit an analysis that had no, well, analysis.

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