South Carolina's Dawn Staley: 'I Don't Want to Coach in the Men's Game'

Dawn Staley appears to be in the process of building a dynasty with the South Carolina women's basketball team and has no interest in abandoning that to coach on the men's side of the sport.

"No thoughts," she told reporters when asked about the suggestion she should coach Temple's men's team. "I don't want to coach in the men's game."

That some would connect her to the Temple job doesn't come as a huge surprise since she was born and raised in Philadelphia and led the Owls' women's program to plenty of success from 2000-01 to 2007-08.

Seth Davis of CBS Sports was surely thinking that when he suggested Staley for the job after Aaron McKie stepped down:

While Staley made her feelings clear, Temple announced that it hired Adam Fisher for the position on Wednesday.

Frankly, the Temple men's coach would be a step down for Staley. The Owls haven't been past the First Four of the NCAA tournament since 2013 and were just 16-16 this past season.

By contrast, the South Carolina women's team is two wins away from completing a perfect season and winning back-to-back national championships.

Staley has been with the Gamecocks since the 2008-09 campaign, and they have been to the NCAA tournament 11 times and the Final Four five times, including the last three seasons. They won the national title in 2017 and again last season and are in position to do so again this season.

Throw in seven SEC regular-season and tournament championships, and she is already an icon in South Carolina.

Maybe she will take another coaching job somewhere else in the future, but for now she is dominating the college basketball world and collecting championships. She isn't about to stop doing that, even if there are some connections with the Temple job.