COLUMBIA — Shortly after coach Dawn Staley became the highest-paid coach in NCAA women’s basketball history, South Carolina will honor one of the game’s most accomplished coaches, Tennessee legend coach Pat Summitt.
Summitt coached the Lady Vols for 38 seasons. She won eight national championships and is one of just three coaches to win back-to-back titles – 2007 and 2008.
She was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in 2011 when she was 59 years old. She retired in 2012 with an overall coaching record of 1,098-208 and died June 28, 2016, at the age of 63.
Each year, the SEC dedicates a week to honor the foundation that Summitt laid for coaches like Staley, and how she helped transform women’s basketball in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in addition to raising awareness for Alzheimer’s.
The initiative is called We Back Pat and No. 2 South Carolina (17-1, 5-0 SEC) will honor Summitt on Sunday (3 p.m., ESPN) when No. 13 Oklahoma (15-3, 3-2) comes to Colonial Life Arena.
“It’s only right,” Staley said of honoring her legacy. “Pat Summitt has been the standard in our game. She’s done things that you can only imagine, like only imagine and to me, in a short period of time.”
How Dawn Staley fared vs Pat Summitt
As a player at Virginia, Staley met Summitt’s Lady Vols three consecutive years in the NCAA Tournament from 1989-91. The Cavaliers won in 1990 but in both 1989 and 1991, Tennessee beat Virginia and went on to win the national championship.
In the time after Staley arrived in Columbia in 2008 and before Summitt retired after the 2011-12 season, the two coaches battled eight times. The Gamecocks lost seven times to the Lady Vols, with the only win on Feb. 2, 2012, which was the final game Summitt ever coached against Staley.
“When you see Tennessee, it was a standard of doing business and it was all attributed to coach Summitt and her ability to bring out the best in all of her players,” Staley said. “I had the great fortune of playing with, against her players and there’s something about them. You know that if you have to go into a foxhole, her players are the type of players you want to be in the foxhole with.”
What is We Back Pat Week?
This is the 13th annual We Back Pat week. The SEC dedicates a week of games to honor Summitt’s legacy and raise awareness for the Pat Summitt Foundation. The foundation was started by Summitt and her son Tyler shortly after her diagnosis in August 2011.
Tennessee held its We Back Pat game on Thursday night when the Lady Vols hosted Mississippi State.
All 16 SEC women’s basketball teams will wear We Back Pat warmup shirts for their games during the weeklong initiative.
DETAILS: We Back Pat Week: SEC honors Lady Vols’ Pat Summitt, schedule, how to watch, what to know
Lulu Kesin covers South Carolina athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email her at lkesin@gannett.com and follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @Lulukesin
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Dawn Staley: Pat Summitt was the ‘standard’ for South Carolina coach
