South Carolina’s Dawn Staley weighs in on Hannah Hidalgo nose ring controversy

A few hours before the No. 1 South Carolina women’s basketball team tipped off its Sweet 16 game on Friday, one of the stories of the NCAA Tournament played out at MVP Arena.

During the Notre Dame-Oregon State game earlier that afternoon, star Notre Dame guard Hannah Hidalgo missed a significant portion of the second quarter after referees told her she couldn’t play unless she removed her nose piercing.

Hidalgo missed 4:09 of game time while two Notre Dame trainers wrestled to remove the piece of jewelry from the left side of her nose. Hidalgo, a freshman All-American guard, wound up scoring a season-low 10 points on 4-of-17 shooting in a 70-65 loss to Oregon State.

Hidalgo told USA Today Sports postgame that she received conflicting information regarding her piercing and one referee told her pregame she’d be fine if she covered up the ring. She was then told at the end of the first quarter that it had to be removed.

“I think it’s BS,” Hidalgo told the website Friday. “They should have just let me play with it if that’s what they said.”

With its five-point win over Notre Dame, Oregon State advanced to an Elite Eight game on Sunday afternoon (1 p.m., ABC) against South Carolina, which beat Indiana later on Friday afternoon.

Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley was asked about the Hidalgo situation during her Saturday news conference and said that, leading into USC’s game against Indiana, officials didn’t specifically communicate anything to her regarding tighter enforcement of a jewelry rule.

Notre Dame coach Niele Ivey said Friday that after her team’s loss, she was told the enforcement of the NCAA’s rule on jewelry midgame (Rule 1-25.7) was a “point of emphasis” for the Sweet 16.

“I wasn’t alerted to anything,” Staley said. “But, obviously, our players are into social media. They saw what took place. It’s strange. … In the beginning of (our) season, we were on piercings alert. Hey, take that out. Take that out. Take that out. Don’t come in here with that. Don’t come in the weight room with that.”

Gamecocks players weren’t totally receptive to those requests from Staley and the rest of the coaching staff to the point where, as Staley joked Saturday: “I don’t have any more stamina to fight that. I don’t.”

“I guess the NCAA didn’t have the stamina to do it during the regular season, so they’ve got enough to do it now,” she said. “You’ve got to adhere to the rules of real time, and if it cramps the player’s style, you shouldn’t have been wearing it in the first place.

“I don’t know. I don’t want any distractions for our team. I want our team to be able to just ride the wave that they’re on. If you’ve dealt with a little bit of adversity in taking out one of your piercings, just do it. Keep the main thing the main thing.”

Players describe ‘inconsistent’ rule

Ahead of undefeated South Carolina’s Elite Eight game against No. 3 seed Oregon State, Gamecocks players surveyed by The State in the open locker room described an inconsistent enforcement of NCAA rules surrounding jewelry in-game.

The NCAA, in a statement released to a pool reporter Friday, said that Rule 1-25.7 of the 2023-24 women’s rules book states that “head decorations, head wear, helmets, and jewelry are illegal” for players to wear in game, with an exemption for “religious head wear.”

The NCAA also clarified that “clear, narrow and pliable piercing retainers used by players to prevent closure” of pierced areas, such as their noses, are “legal” as long as refs determined those plastic placeholders are “not dangerous to other players.”

But Gamecocks starters Kamilla Cardoso and Ashlyn Watkins both told The State they’ve played numerous games this season with their nose piercings in and the enforcement of rules on in-game jewelry often boils down to each specific game’s referee crew.

“Some of us have been playing with nose rings for the whole season,” said Cardoso, USC’s 6-foot-7 center, adding that “sometimes I do play with nose rings. They don’t see it because I’m so tall. But since NCAAs started, I’ve taken it off.”

Watkins, a starting forward, said that jewelry enforcement “really just depends on who is actually reffing the game. Sometimes, refs make it known, ‘No jewelry,’ from the start. And if they don’t make it known, I just keep it in and they don’t really make a big deal out of it.”

Players said that referees have communicated those jewelry bans during pregame captains’ meetings, when refs and team captains from both teams briefly huddle at midcourt pregame.

“That was really on the refs,” Watkins said. “They could’ve told her to take it out before the game.”

Guard Te-Hina Paopao, an Oregon transfer, is frequently USC’s representative in those captains’ meetings with officials and said she feels like refs have been “cracking down” on jewelry rules recently, especially in the 2024 SEC Tournament in Greenville.

“It’s very inconsistent,” Paopao said. “I mean, in the beginning of the season, nothing was being said. Everybody was playing with jewelry in their nose. … I just find it weird that they’re really cracking down on that rule (now).”

While South Carolina players expressed frustration on Hidalgo’s behalf — had No. 2 Notre Dame won, it would’ve set up an intriguing rematch against South Carolina after those teams dueled in Paris in their season opener — they also said they’d use Friday’s situation (which made national news) as a teaching moment going forward in the NCAA Tournament.

After all, every USC player with a nose ring is either comfortable using a temporary plastic piercing as a placeholder midgame or, in some cases, has a “healed” nose piercing that won’t close up if a piercing is removed.

“It was big,” South Carolina guard Raven Johnson said of Hidalgo’s situation. “She was out for a big four minutes. They needed her. They said it was stuck, and they had to do dang near some surgery on her nose. I think that was kind of crazy.”

“But after seeing that, I’m pretty sure none of us are gonna have a nose ring in our nose.”

Next South Carolina WBB game

• Who: No. 1 South Carolina (35-0) vs. No. 3 Oregon State (27-7)

• Where: MVP Arena in Albany

• When: 1 p.m. Sunday

• TV: ABC

• Betting line: South Carolina by 14.5 points (Fox Sports)

• Next up: The winner of South Carolina-Oregon State advances to the Final Four as the winner of the Albany 1 Regional and will play its first game next Friday (April 5) against either Texas or NC State