The Dawn Staley coaching tree is expanding around women's college basketball

When a coach reaches a certain status with their own accomplishments, eventually we turn to other marks of greatness that extend beyond their own records or personhood. We start to look at things like whether the style they implemented changed the game, or how many assistants are picked off along the way to lead their own programs.

The latter is how we get to a coaching tree. Branches grow out of that one super great head coach, and then you get the branches made of people were assistants under the super good coach. Then they have their own offshoots. And so on.

People talk about good coaching trees like Gregg Popovich’s and Bill Walsh’s. There are also less successful trees like Phil Jackson or Bill Belichick. But ultimately, if you stay around long enough, you’re going to have staff turnover. The only people who stay around long are people who win. A lot.

Dawn Staley has won. A lot. Three NCAA Championships, four Naismith Coach of the Year awards, and a career that began in 2008 as USC’s head coach. That’s not bad. And that’s a long time.

In the very recent past, Dawn Staley has had staff like Alyssa Moore, Jacob Coltrane, and Winston Gandy all move on to bigger and better things.

Well, it happened again.

Another former Dawn Staley assistant is spreading her wings

Here. Twitter for you.

Chloe Rice is joining Winston Gandy at Grand Canyon University! How cool for them to, like, do that!

Dawn Staley’s coaching tree is worthy of a true deep dive. She has touched the game and so many players in many ways. Those ways are pretty damn good, I’m pretty sure. You could always be wrong about people you don’t know.

But this isn’t the first time this has happened, and it likely won’t be the last. Somehow, South Carolina continues to reload year after year, with both players and staff. I think everything will be fine.