Winning two games by a combined 53 points usually leaves a coach with very little to complain about. Dawn Staley’s No. 1 South Carolina team has done just that, and yet she keeps pointing at something that is missing. It has nothing to do with talent or effort. It has to do with how well her players know each other.

“This team likes each other. They really like each other. We just don’t have enough game experience for us to like each other enough on the court,” Staley said.

Staley said the coaches can already see the connection, and that the team has come a long way since June. The more games the Gamecocks play, the more they will learn to count on each other. She also wants to clean up their transition game. “We play fast,” she said, but they do not convert at a high rate.

Her bigger goal is “playing as a cohesive unit for 40 minutes,” on offense as well as on defense. She does not want to put a ceiling on this team.

“I think the sky’s the limit.”

It is not the first time she has talked that way this week. After South Carolina beat North Carolina 84-39 on Sunday in Charlotte, Staley praised her squad.

“I think we’re a work in progress. You know you’ll see us make jumps from, from game to game.”

That win came with a lot of proof. The Gamecocks forced 24 turnovers, outrebounded the Tar Heels 48-33 and held them to 25% shooting. Chloe Kitts had 17 points and 10 rebounds in just 18 minutes, her second game back after missing all of last season. Dawn Staley said she was proud of how her group finished the game.

The season opener told a similar story in a different way. On Nov. 2 in Paris, South Carolina beat Maryland 101-93. The Gamecocks led by as many as 31 points, then gave up 60 in the second half, and Staley said afterward that she wished her team had finished better. Against North Carolina, that problem was gone.

So when she says the team is still finding itself, she is talking about the gap between those two games, and about how much more it can grow.

The roster explains why. South Carolina returned eight players and lost no one to the transfer portal, but it also added new faces. There are transfers Jordan Lee and Brooke Quarles-Daniels, plus a freshman class ranked No. 2 in the country by ESPN. Kitts and Ashlyn Watkins are back from injuries that kept them out last season. And with longtime floor general Raven Johnson gone, Dawn Staley is running the point guard spot by committee.

All of that is a lot of new chemistry to build in a short time. So far in the season, the Gamecocks have won both their matchups, with Joyce Edwards leading the charge with 19 points per game, followed by Agot Makeer with 14.5 PPG. Ashlyn Watkins is leading the rebounding, with a career high of 10 RPG. Chloe Kitts, who missed the entire 2025-26 season, rejoined the team this year and is leading the Gamecocks in assists, recording an average of 3.5 APG so far this season.

The next tests come fast. The Gamecocks visit Clemson on Thursday, then host third-ranked USC and JuJu Watkins on Sunday, Nov. 15, on ABC. They play UConn on Nov. 24. South Carolina has lost back-to-back national title games, and Staley said in October that the team needs to be mentally stronger.

In that light, her words this week make sense. The Gamecocks have the wins. What Dawn Staley wants now is the feeling that comes only with time, and she knows it cannot be rushed.