University of South Carolina's women's basketball team is the standard around the country.
Dawn Staley has done an excellent job during her career at South Carolina, which started during the 2008 season.
Staley, a former WNBA All-Star and ACC Female Athlete of the Year, has accomplished a great deal throughout her career and has been even more successful as a coach.
She's a three-time national champion, has seven final four appearances, is a nine-time SEC Tournament champion, and a nine-time SEC regular season champion.
However, before she decided to coach at South Carolina, other schools had expressed interest in her.
As a head coach at Temple, Staley demonstrated her ability to win games at the highest level, going 28-4 in the 2005-2006 season, including a 19-0 record in the Atlantic 10.
She took over a rebuilding program at South Carolina, and the rest has been history since.
However, according to Staley, another SEC program was interested in her at the time.
"Alabama came after me first in 2005," Staley wrote. "I visited the campus. I liked the athletic director. But I couldn't see myself living in Alabama."
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Alabama has excellent athletic programs, and it wouldn't have been surprising to see them achieve similar success if Stanley had taken that job.
However, USC was where she wanted to coach, adding that the cherry on top was her parents being from South Carolina.
"I was drawn to the fact that USC was part of the SEC and its storied legacy in women's basketball," Staley wrote. "Pat Summitt was in this league, Andy Landers, Melanie Balcomb, all these legendary coaches. I was looking to refine my skills, rise to compete with the best. The cherry on top was that my parents were originally from South Carolina."