For most teams, clinching a fifth-straight SEC title is cause for celebration. For Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks, it’s a warning not to get complacent. The message inside the locker room from head coach Dawn Staley and senior guard Ta’Niya Latson was clear: the job is far from over.

Their latest victory marked coach Staley’s 10th regular-season SEC championship and locked up the top seed for the Gamecocks in the SEC Tournament. But technically, they could still end up sharing the title if they stumble in their final two games.

And that possibility just doesn’t sit well with them.

“We got two more games. We gotta finish strong, and I feel like everybody on the team knows that,” Latson said during a postgame interview. “But there’s a certain feel and sound and practice. I feel like we have a lot of momentum, finishing the regular season, and I feel like everybody’s on one accord.”

This is the type of mindset that starts at the top in South Carolina. Because even though Dawn Staley didn’t dismiss the idea of sharing a title, the coach didn’t embrace it either.

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“It’s cool when you share it, but not really. So we want to win it outright. So it takes one more win for us to do that. And hopefully we can get that done on Thursday cause we are here now, and I just don’t want us to take our foot off the gas because I know this league,” she said.

The math is simple. If the Gamecocks defeat the Missouri Tigers on Feb. 26 or the No. 16 Kentucky Wildcats on March 1, the championship belongs to them alone. And the only scenario in which they will be forced to share? Losing both of those games while No. 4 Texas and/or No. 6 Vanderbilt win out their games.

However, South Carolina controls its own outcome, and that’s exactly how Dawn Staley prefers it.

The Gamecocks have now joined Tennessee as the only programs to win five consecutive SEC regular-season titles, though Tennessee still owns the conference record with seven straight from 1998 to 2004.

With the SEC Tournament set for March 4-8 in Greenville, the focus inside Columbia isn’t on what’s already been secured; it’s on what still needs to be finished. Which is what we have already covered above – one more win that locks the regular season outright.

What’s Next for Dawn Staley and South Carolina?

Last season, South Carolina and Texas split their home-and-home series and finished with identical conference records, which forced a coin flip to determine the SEC Tournament’s No. 1 seed. Though the Gamecocks ultimately won, coach Staley wants no such drama this time.

“Play to the habits that you’ve developed over this season, and it’s worked out for us 90% of the season. Let’s not try to do anything we haven’t done, and that’s just it. Let’s win, let’s win outright… Last year, we’re looking right and left … we didn’t control our own destiny … we don’t want to go down that route again,” Dawn Staley said as per Greenville News. 

Their next test comes at home against Missouri, and if you look at the history, it strongly favors the Gamecocks. Why? Because they haven’t lost a home SEC game since March 3, 2019, building a 55-game conference streak in Columbia that has turned their arena into a fortress.

ESPN gives South Carolina a 99% chance to win this upcoming matchup. And if they win, the Gamecocks will seal the title without any coin flips this time.

With the SEC Tournament around the corner and March looming, every possession now is less about clinching and more about conditioning a championship mindset, and Staley is doing exactly that. She doesn’t just want a title; she wants dominance.