​Oct. 30—COLUMBIA — It’s in a place where there isn’t a lot to work on. Even with nearly half the team being newcomers and two more returning after season-long absences last year.But Dawn Staley could never be satisfied despite leading South Carolina to the top of the sport and becoming one of the most consistently great programs in the game’s history. Just since 2021, the Gamecocks have reached six straight Final Fours and have appeared in the last three national championship games.The Gamecocks did not win the last two. And the last one …Staley thought she saw a reason.”I think mental fatigue, physical fatigue has something to do with it. And then I thought that especially our top players logged a lot of minutes,” she said. “We got to create more opportunities for us to have a lot more depth. We are pretty successful when we have depth.”Last season, while again tremendously successful, was littered with so many injuries that the Gamecocks only had 6-8 players any given night, and only two played every game. Starter Chloe Kitts and sixth woman Ashlyn Watkins were gone before the season ever started. There were enough dings and knocks to the others that barely anyone was unaffected.Yet they still reached the last game of the season. Hold it together for 40 more minutes and they’re national champs for the fourth time in the past nine attempts.UCLA, a senior-laden squad, was not going to let that happen. The Bruins blew the game wide-open from the tip and cruised to the title.Sometimes, you just get beat. That happened in 2025, when another stellar USC team was turned inside-out by Connecticut for the title. It was the same UConn team that had blown USC’s doors off in a regular-season game in Columbia weeks earlier.This time, Staley detected something else.Perhaps she and the team got a little too “up” for winning the game before, a semifinal rematch against UConn, that they had nothing left for the championship game. She couldn’t characterize UCLA as a one-off because the same thing happened in the SEC Tournament championship game — the Gamecocks were so geeked up to beat LSU in the semifinal that they had nothing left for Texas, which helps explain why the Longhorns smoked USC in Greenville.”And them understanding that, as much as we talk about it, it’s not a real thing until it really happens to them. I’m encouraged that we all understand it. We just have to get through it. It’s got to happen to you,” Staley said. “Whatever it is, whatever the highs and lows of a season, you must experience them in order for you to get stronger and understand.”Staley’s immediate fix was to institute practices that lasted a bit longer. Throughout the year will be mentions of mental health, about separating from the game a bit and thinking, preparing, readying for the next.”Yeah, it was a lot. And people were in and out. People were injured. So we kind of had a short bench,” forward Joyce Edwards said. “But I feel like it definitely plays into it, especiall