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A piece of the net: Howard's Ty Grace, other Black women NCAA coaches, inspired by Dawn Staley
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- A piece of the net: Howard's Ty Grace, other Black women NCAA coaches, inspired by Dawn Staley
The meeting was brief, a pass in the hall at Colonial Life Arena, a place where crowds are loud and the Gamecocks women's basketball team tries to run you off the court.
Ty Grace and her Howard players were looking up as they passed the nation's No. 1 team. Grace laughed at the thought of that, but she was thankful for the moment.
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"I'll see you on Friday," Dawn Staley, South Carolina's coach, told Grace.
The women hugged. This isn't nearly the start of their relationship. It began when Grace was much younger, and she watched Staley slash through teams for Virginia on the way to three consecutive Final Fours in the early 1990s.
It continued at the start of this season, when Staley sent of piece of the net the Gamecocks used in 2017 to power past Mississippi State and make Staley the second Black women's head coach to win an NCAA basketball title. The tradition was begun by Carolyn Peck, who was the first when she coached Purdue all the way in 1999. In 2015, Peck gave Staley a cut of her net, which South Carolina's coach accepted with the understanding she would do the same to another coach when she won it all.
Staley obliged but couldn't decide. There are more than 70 Black women who are the head coaches of Division 1 women's schools, according to ESPN. Staley sent them all a sample.
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"Receiving that net, to be able to represent a woman of color on this stage, is just something you can't ...," Grace said earlier this week. "Representation matters; it's something you can't even imagine that you have to talk about, that you have to endure, and being the best is something that people expect from you at every level, and she's done it at every single level. And I was just honored by her to be able to receive that piece of the net and knowing that I had an opportunity to coach against her, to play in a game against her, is just a dream of a lifetime."
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Grace's Bison (21-9), a women's No. 16 seed in the NCAA Tournament, play Staley's overall No. 1 Gamecocks (29-2) Friday in the first round on Staley's home court. It's an opportunity Howard's players had to practically pinch themselves about when they arrived at Colonial Life for the First Four.
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"Dawn Staley, she's created a dynasty, and to be able to play in the arena that they practice and play in and prep in, it's just a dream come true," Howard point guard Iyanna Warren said.
Staley has compiled a 360-105 record over 14 seasons at South Carolina, reaching three Final Fours. Before that, she led Temple to a 172-80 record as a perennial NCAA Tournament team.
On Wednesday night against Incarnate Word, Howard's women's team got the slightest sliver of that attention, winning its first NCAA Tournament game while playing on an ESPN network.
"We feel like superstars," said Brooklynn Fort-Davis, who scored a team-high 15 points in Howard's 55-51 First Four win.
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In that game, Howard endured a sluggish first half. Shots weren't falling, but the Bison grabbed 53 rebounds – 20 more than their opponents - and used their slashing style to pull away. All along, Grace urged them to play through their struggles.
As Grace implored her team to keep shooting - "Your next shot is your best shot," she likes to say - Staley sat in the stands and watched.
"I think she's a star in the game," Staley said Thursday.
Grace, 45, starred at Division II New Haven, was later head coach there (going 44-16) and has also been an assistant women's coach at Seton Hall and Army. She began as Howard's head coach in 2015 and, by 2020-21, she was named Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Coach of the Year. This season, she led the Howard women to their first NCAA Tournament berth since 2001 and sixth overall.
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"I think Ty's done a great job with Howard, and the way she coaches, the discipline, you can see it," Staley said. "We don't want to take her from Howard, but when you're a competitor, you want to compete at the highest level and – not to say that Howard isn't the highest level – but there's more.
"Like when I was at Temple, I got to a point where I was enjoying it and then you keep losing in the first and second round and then you're like, 'Man, this sucks. I wanna win!' Seriously, it wasn't anything against Temple and my players there, it was just, 'If I'm gonna be in it, I wanna win.' And sometimes you have to put yourself in a position where you can attract better talent you can coach.
"Coming to the SEC helped me to be a better coach because of the coaches that I faced and what you have to do to learn. It's performing. Performance matters. Production matters, and Ty's doing a great job with it."
As a star player in the WNBA and Olympics, Staley got her shot at coaching. She thinks others, like the ones she sent those pieces of the net, don't often get the same chance.
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"I don't think I'm the common denominator in the success of Black coaches," she said. "I think opportunity is that."
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A decade ago, Jolette Law was fired as the coach of Illinois. Law was 69-93 but reached the WNIT twice for a program without a rich women's basketball history. The team has made it to the WNIT once since, without sniffing the NCAAs. Law, now one of Staley's assistants, hasn't had another head coaching job.
"When Coach Law got the Illinois job (in 2007), a lot of Black coaches got opportunities during that time and then, probably, three or four years later, probably 75% of them weren't head coaches anymore," Staley said. "They don't get recycled like other coaches, so I think, now, Black coaches are more prepared because they've had to be prepared. They saw what happened, they saw what happened to Coach Law, and that trend of coaches that got an opportunity, and they've just prepared well."
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This year's women's NCAA Tournament has 12 head coaches who are Black women.
"It means everything," Grace says. "It means so much for the university, so much for these players (for) people to know who they really are, to not have this stigma or this thought about what they think HBCUs are, what they think Howard is. It's one of the great institutions in the country with some of the best student-athletes, the best students in the country, so I couldn't be more proud. I'm glad that they get to see who we are."
Howard is a decided underdog but its players don't seem to fear the Gamecocks. They took solace in the idea they play the same style of basketball: fast and in transition. Howard likes to press and is ranked 24th in the country in rebounds per game but has one player listed over 6 feet on its roster. South Carolina has 10, including 6-5 Aliyah Boston (16.8 points per, 12 rebounds per game) and 6-7 Kamilla Cardoso. Howard's leading scorer, Destiny Howell, averages 12.8 points per game.
The pregame news conference with Staley, Boston and guard Destanni Henderson was full of big-picture questions and lasted more than 10 minutes before the players were asked about Howard.
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But Staley made sure Grace and the Bison were well-covered.
"It's not a thing where we think we're just gonna roll over, roll the ball out and beat them," Staley said. "We prepare for every opponent the same exact way. We cross our T's and dot our I's. There isn't anybody that we disrespect in this game because it is March Madness. For as long as I've been a player and now the coach, that's one thing that I've never done and I won't allow anybody to disrespect any of our opponents.
"They're a formidable opponent that can shoot it, that can rebound the basketball, that can defend. And when you have that combination on any given day, anybody can win."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Howard's Ty Grace, more Black women's coaches, inspired by Dawn Staley
