For more than a year, Dawn Staley, the women’s basketball coach at South Carolina, has had a hollowed-out plan for a familiar challenge. As always, she wanted to construct one of the country’s most dazzling rosters; as never before, she had to finish the wooing and scrutinizing of players mainly through texting and calling, FaceTiming and Zooming.
But this Tuesday, one of Staley’s favored strategies — the face-to-face meeting — will at last be available once more.
“I like sitting in front of people,” said Staley, whose dog, Champ, had sometimes seemed to wonder why she was home so often during the coronavirus pandemic.