South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley will be part of the new CBS Sports WNBA pregame show, beginning June 7.
Staley, now a three-time national champion with the Gamecocks, will spend time this offseason in the WNBA, serving as an analyst alongside Renee Montgomery, who played in the league from 2009-19. Sarah Kustok will join the two analysts as the host.
Advertisement
The first appearance for the new show will be ahead of the game between the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky, which tips off at 8 p.m. ET on CBS. Staley has former players on both teams. Aliyah Boston is a star for the Fever, and Kamilla Cardoso is a star for the Sky.
CBS sports and the WNBA agreed to a multi-year deal in 2024, which included CBS airing eight regular-season games per year. The June 7 game will be the first. According to the WNBA, it will be the first-ever primetime WNBA regular-season game on broadcast television.
This isn’t Staley’s first time on a pregame show. In addition to being interviewed on ESPN’s “College GameDay” multiple times, she was on NBC as part of the network’s basketball coverage of the Olympics with Mike Tirico last summer.
REQUIRED READING: Dawn Staley’s home is with South Carolina women’s basketball but she’s forever Philadelphia
Advertisement
According to the announcement from CBS Sports, the pregame show will be a part of only four of the eight games. The second will be on July 12, when the Golden State Valkyries play the Las Vegas Aces. There are nine former South Carolina players in the WNBA this season and two are on the Aces, A’ja Wilson and Tiffany Mitchell.
The final two pregame shows are on Aug. 9 (7:30 p.m.) for another Fever vs. Sky game and Aug. 16 when the New York Liberty play the Minnesota Lynx (1:30 p.m.), a rematch of the 2024 WNBA finals.
Lulu Kesin covers South Carolina athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email her at lkesin@gannett.com and follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @Lulukesin
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Dawn Staley to serve as analyst on new CBS Sports WNBA pregame show
