 you should see what it looks like from up here. Thank you everyone for being here. My name is Brad Muller proud to be the voice of your Gamecocks for the last 15 years. This never gets old, does it? In case you've forgotten how we got here, it's been a couple of weeks. These young ladies went 14-0 against ranked teams this year. At some point this year, they beat all the other teams that were number one seeds in the NCAA tournament. And all of the teams that were in this year's final four. And they beat one of those teams twice. Of course they were SEC champions. Now they're national champions. Obviously it wasn't easy. Everybody gave them their best game every night. But number one, wire to wire. That's how they started, that's how they finished. And that's why we're here. Thank all of you fans for supporting this team throughout the year and over the years. And thank you to our Gamecock women's basketball alumni. A lot of them are down here. Thank you. To get things rolling at this time, please welcome to the stage the city of Columbia mayor, the honorable Daniel J. Rickenman. Nation! We can't start if we don't start with a chance. So this side game, that side cuts. Game! I had to do it. Man what a great day. Thank y'all for coming out to celebrate. These did an incredible consulate. You heard 35 games. They broke nine records. You know we had Aliyah with the double doubles and the rebounds breaking records. Come on! This is an incredible time but you know at the city we wanted to celebrate and coach Staley could you come up here for a minute? Two time national coach of the year! Decided to celebrate in the city of Columbia and we wanted to make sure that we proclaimed you know on April 3rd. They won this little thing called the national championship. And we talked about it. We said well you know why should we just declare one day national championship day? So we just decided to declare the whole damn month y'all. I have here the proclamation by the whole city council and I wanted to give this one to coach Staley so she can hang it in her office with the key to the city which will get her out of parking tickets. But it's my great honor thank you for and all the women in this basketball team, the band, the cheerleaders, the guys in the support. Y'all hey it's a team effort and it was all of y'all. Congratulations! Thank you Mr. Mayor and now fans please welcome U.S. Congressman James Clyburn. Thank you very very much coach. Don't go far. In a few weeks you all are going to be visiting your nation's capital and you will be received at the White House by the President of the United States. I'm going to leave the date up to you all to work out. He made the commitment that he'll do it and you're going to decide when you want to come. Be sure not to schedule it on a day when Congress is not in session. Please do it when I'm going to be there. But in the meantime I want to present you with a couple of things coach. Now the coach is one of my road dogs. We hang out together. Now I want to give you this certificate and this flag. On the day of April 6th in celebration of this victory, this flag flew over the capital and I want you to have it. Now one of the things I try to do in order to make accomplishments real memorable is to not only congratulate you in person as I've done but I put in the congressional record on April 7th. This is the record of the proceedings of the United States Congress on April 7th and in this record all where this little yellow tab is each one of you get a copy you will see a tribute to the Gamecocks with your names throughout it. So for the rest of your lives and each one of you will get a copy of the record to hang on your walls. Now what I usually do during an election year I used to put my picture right next to it. I'm not going to do that but congratulations not only did you win a national title you won the hearts of the entire country. The University of South Carolina is so fortunate to have great leadership at the top so at this time please welcome your university president and Gamecocks superfan Dr. Harris Pastides. Gamecocks at the state house tonight. May start by recognizing the back-to-back two-time national champions the Carolina girls. Ladies and gentlemen what a ride it has been how many of you were here for the early NCAA round in Columbia how many were at the regionals in Greensboro North Carolina and how many of you like me went up to chilly chilly Minneapolis. I felt something happening to me I told Patricia as we went out there to play Louisville I said we have a date with destiny and she said destiny Henderson or destiny Littleton. I said no no no no no no it's not that kind of date it's a date that has been written that has been predicted early in the season. It was a team that although they had the lowest average offensive scoring of recent NCAA women's champions they also held their opponents to the lowest score in modern history. I want to tell you though Congressman Clyburn said it right these young women won the hearts and minds of people throughout America they were and are America's team. I want to tell you Don Staley what an amazing person she has done more for gender equity for equality in women's athletics than anybody in modern history and it's the dawn of a new destiny isn't it. I know she's gonna say this but I'll I'll say it first the fams not the fans but the fams if you're a fam raise your hand right now and I'd like us to coin something new there's another SEC team in football that claim they have a 12th man and that would be the fans but we all of us together male female whatever you go by we are the sixth woman all of us in closing I want to remind everybody that this is I don't care what the newspapers say this is the third national championship we were in Dallas in 2017 when we beat Mississippi State but I'll tell you in 2020 we had only one loss all season we were 16 and 0 in the SEC and we were going to be crowned the national champions and there are some teammates out there who came back to say hello today we love you we cherish you that was the consensus national championship this is the third one we're gonna keep going how about we mayor how about we keep this parade route because we're gonna need it again next year so it's been the honor of my life to come back and serve one more time we're going we're going away on June 30th but I could tell you as soon as women's basketball season starts we might not have the expensive seats but we're never leaving this team so go game cocks let's get the party started always a tough act to follow but fortunately our next guest knows a little something about winning national champions national championships your athletics director Ray Tanner thank you for allowing me to follow congress punk liburn and president pasty these what a treat 2017 in dallas texas they asked me where i wanted to sit and i said i want to sit close to the court so i can be on tv i sat right behind asia wilson's father i got plenty of tv time i haven't had that much since in minneapolis they said you're not going to be on tv like you were in 17 but what a wonderful what a wonderful celebration it is tonight to have so many people on this parade route we didn't want it to end matter of fact we might get back out and go back around again but i want to tell you it's an under statement to say how talented these women are at playing basketball it's an understatement it's an understatement to talk about our coaching staff and our support staff that work so hard every day in women's basketball give them a round of applause and a vastly tremendously understatement to talk about the greatest of all time in dawn staley that we would be here we had the confidence we had the expectation but it still takes a team and a team is together everyone accomplishes more and that is the thams that have been recognized we appreciate you very much you make it almost impossible to lose a colonial life arena thank you so much i want to share one more number with you since we left dallas in 2017 this program under coach staley's direction has 178 wins how about that 74 of those wins are in southeastern comforts play if you want to do the math that means we win 86 percent of every single game that we play never heard of that and as dr pasty he said ain't no stopping us now we'll be back thank you let's welcome home your south carolina game cox please welcome to the stage your women's basketball support and coaching staff assistant coach fred schmiel assistant coach joelette law associate head coach lisa boyer and now your game cox student athletes a freshman forward from ellenwood georgia number 20 senaya fagan a freshman guard from date in ohio number 23 breezy hall a freshman guard from atlanta number 25 raven johnson a freshman guard from wilmington north carolina number 44 senaya rivers a sophomore guard from baltimore maryland number two anaya russell a sophomore center from brazil camilla cardozo a junior guard from lexington south carolina number zero olivia thompson a junior guard from toleta ohio number one zaya cook a junior forward from st thomas in the u.s virgin islands number four aliyah boston a junior guard from rock island illinois number 12 brie biel a junior forward from mississauga ontario canada number 15 leticia amy here now i know she's not here but let's make her hear us from indiana a senior guard from fort mires florida number three destiny henderson a senior forward from roam georgia number five victoria saxon a senior guard from san diego california number 11 destiny littleton a senior forward from charleston south carolina number 32 elissa weselik and a graduate student from durham north carolina number 24 lily grizzette and finally your 2022 gamecock women's basketball head coach don staley and now let's hear from a pretty special young lady a fantastic student athlete and an even better person the sec and consensus national and defensive player of the year aliyah boston say thank you all for coming out um we couldn't have had a great season without you guys um we hear you guys every single night we step on the florida play a game and i just want to say thank you now the person who's built this program to what it is today a hall of famer as a player and let's face it she's going to be a hall of famer as a coach right your sec and national coach of the year don staley first of all i know when we when we get together like this you know everybody wants to hear something that's so profound right here's the most profound thing i have to say that is the victory was won before it was played so often so often that um people that are in the position of our of our team um being the number one team in the country um being the number one team in the country at the beginning in the middle and at the end so often you don't finish the job um and we couldn't finish the job without having the complete support from the very top you know our president president pastides um our entering president um president um meredith hopefully i'm not saying that i'm i gotta i gotta practice that name a little bit but i'll have it by gelato first our mayor our council women and men our general assembly every single person that is of prestige really backed our program they they did and we felt it from the very top um all the way down to you know anybody that's walking um these streets of columbia south carolina to ride down main street and to interact with you all our fans and they hear you like they hear you scream from the bottom of your hearts how much you love us really resonates with me it it touches me it really it touches me beyond like i'm a filly girl and i don't really get emotional but you make me emotional and i i really appreciate it um it it's it's worth everything that we had to go through i know we made it look easy but it really wasn't easy the sacrifice of of all of our players um all season long um was was apparent to us but probably not to you all so i want to thank our players for for for the sacrifice at the beginning of the season we asked all of our players all of our coaches all of our our highlighters as our male practice squad the highlighters we asked them to make this year special and when we said make it special they didn't really understand what that meant they didn't um but it meant that some people played a big role as far as getting out there and play and someone someone will play a bigger role because it's a bigger role not to play um so the people that that didn't play a whole lot you know your role was a lot bigger than you thought it was um because you didn't have to accept it and you could have blown it up and we could have not been in this position right here um so i thank you for that um and then lastly i want to i want to thank you are our fans like seriously our fans no one no one like they they can they can make up statistics and and say we were the lowest scoring team in NCAA tournament history they could say that okay they could say they could say that we could help we held our opponents to the lowest points you know in the history of the NCAA tournament okay here's what they can't say that we don't have the best fans in the country so when you're calculating stats take that in consideration so before i before i go though here's how special our fans are these are pretty cool um there there are two people on our team that really didn't get a whole lot of notoriety um but our fans thought that they should they should be honored today um those two people two players are victorian sacks did come on up here and and don't ever mistake her name her name is breed breed bill big body bends the fans wanted one of us to recognize you because so often you you you give us so much of you and yet you're not often recognized in the public's eye so on the biggest day of our season which is the day in the share this moment with our fans they wanted to say thank you for your contributions to our national championship so i said that was the last thing here's the very last thing here's the very last thing let's run it back