South Carolina women’s basketball head coach Dawn Staley just let the world know that she’s a big fan of BYU’s Diljeet Taylor.
Staley appeared on Citius Mag’s Prefontaine Classic show on Saturday and shared her admiration for BYU’s women’s cross-country head coach and associate director of track and field.
“I’ve seen the way Diljeet coaches her players,” Staley said. “She’s a mentor. She’s mom-like. She is someone that gives the athlete all of her, like she meets the athlete where they are on any given day.”
In 2024, Staley and Taylor were named to Nike’s Athlete Think Tank, the Deseret News previously reported. They were part of the first coaches cohort of the think tank, along with U.S. women’s national soccer team head coach Emma Hayes and former Olympic volleyball coach Jenny Lang Ping.
“You probably have to hold her back because she wants to get on the track and just kind of will her athletes to the finish line, and that’s what it takes,” Staley said.
Staley said she thinks she and Taylor have a similar coaching style.
“We just really pour into the athlete as a holistic being.”
Taylor is known for her emotional post-race hugs with her athletes. They’ve even caught the attention of Staley.
“You see her, you see the embraces after their meets and you can tell that there’s so much love between them,” Staley said. “They’ve been together for a long time, they’ve trained. You see they are pulling her across the finish line because it’s a show of thank you for all that she’s given.”
Dawn Staley’s previous BYU controversy
In September 2022, Staley canceled a scheduled two-game series between South Carolina and BYU after a Duke volleyball player alleged a racial slur was used toward her from the crowd in Provo, as the Deseret News previously reported.
“As a head coach, my job is to do what’s best for my players and staff. The incident at BYU has led me to reevaluate our home-and-home, and I don’t feel that this is the right time for us to engage in this series,” Staley said in a statement at the time.
The BYU women’s basketball team released its own statement, saying it was “extremely disappointed” by the decision.
“We believe the solution is to work together to root out racism and not to separate from one another,” the team said.
Following BYU’s investigation, which did not find any evidence to corroborate the allegation, and calls from the South Carolina Freedom Caucus to apologize to BYU, Staley stood by her decision.
“After my personal research, I made a decision for the well-being of my team. I regret that my university, my athletics director Ray Tanner and others got drawn into the criticism of a choice that I made,” Staley said in a statement at the time.