"It's an unforgiving conference": Dawn Staley gets real on South Carolina's drawbacks amid upcoming SEC tournament preparations

The South Carolina Gamecocks led by coach Dawn Staley finished the regular season tied with the Texas Longhorns atop the Southeastern Conference table. The No. 1 seed for the SEC tournament was determined by coin toss, with the Gamecocks clinching the fortuitous decision.

During Wednesday's episode of "The Fan Upstate" podcast, Staley detailed the areas in which her team could improve ahead of the tournament.

"I really do think that the habits that you build over a regular season is who you are but within those habits, seeing what we're good at and what we're not good at," Dawn Staley said. [2:06:15]

"I think we can get a little bit of a bump. I think that we can rebound better. I think that we haven't all played well over a stretch. Maybe a player or two might have had career nights and other people fall back but I think there are more people playing their best basketball right now so I feel really good about where we are."

Staley further detailed the competitive nature of the conference and the quality of the teams in it as a factor to consider while going into the tournament.

"It's a daunting task knowing our destination. Granted, we gotta take care of business, we gotta take each game as it is. It's hard to overlook Texas, LSU, Ole Miss, Oklahoma. You know all those teams are super, super great and I know I'm probably missing Tennessee. So, it's an unforgiving conference. You cannot take a day off, a moment off without an opponent taking advantage of it."

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Dawn Staley faces gauntlet to win SEC tournament

Since her arrival in Columbia in 2008, Dawn Staley has won eight SEC tournament titles but her quest for the ninth will be one of the toughest. The conference boasts some of the best teams in the country, with five of them ranked in the top 12 of the latest AP Top 25 Poll.

They include the No. 1 Texas Longhorns, the No. 5 South Carolina Gamecocks, No. 9 LSU Tigers, No. 10 Oklahoma Sooners and the No. 12 Kentucky Wildcats. Overall, seven SEC teams are ranked in the AP Poll.

During her weekly news conference, Staley acknowledged the difficulty of the SEC tournament this year.

“By far, the toughest, the toughest,” Staley said.

The likelihood of a national champion emerging from the SEC is at an all-time high, with all the ranked teams and the reigning champions all in the race. Before March Madness, Dawn Staley will have to run her team through the Southeastern Conference gauntlet first.