Staley did bring her recognition as a player to South Carolina - she was regarded as one of the if not THE face of women's basketball at the time, based on what she accomplished at the collegiate, professional, and Olympic levels. She started out by pulling the consensus #2 behind Griner in Kelsey Bone out of Texas - although Bone stayed in Columbia for just her freshman season, it showed Staley's abilities as a recruiter initially.
But Staley was not a big recruiter in the southern and southeast regions, much less on a national scale at that point. Temple was more of a regional program, and truly South Carolina was as well despite being in the SEC.
But getting to the gist of the question - some coaches recruit their way to successful seasons, and others coach their way to successful recruiting. Staley's case was more of the latter, by far. She had her very first class that had as many as three 4-stars in the 2012 cycle, and got her first McDonald's AA (after Bone) in the 2013 cycle. Her teams won 10 games, then 14 (with Bone), then 18, then 25 and 25 for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons. In just 5 seasons at SC. It wasn't eye-popping success, but it was steady and consistent.
Beyond Bone, the best-rated talent Staley's staff were pulling were mostly in-state talent: Welch, Sessions, Dozier, Coates. Mitchell was out of NC but grew up idolizing Staley, so it was Staley's celebrity as a former player as much as her coaching ability for guards that got Tiffany. Same could be said for Ieasia Walker out of NY, which like Bianca Cuevas-Moore in 2014 was a more familiar recruiting ground for Staley from her Temple days. But still, with a roster that only had a handful of lower 4-star talent and 3-star role players, Staley's staff built the program into a consistent winner and NCAAT participant, that was in the top 25 and finishing with winning SEC records.
And while South Carolina had experienced similar successes in the past, it hadn't done so for any long stretches while a SEC member - and especially struggled against conference foes - so Staley was earning her stripes as an up-and-coming WBB coach, in addition to her name recognition as a former player. With A'ja Wilson, one could say she had fortune that Wilson grew up in her program's backyard. But one might also argue with logic that SC wouldn't have gotten the class it did including Wilson, had the 2013-14 team not had the success it had winning 29 games, rising into the top 10 of the rankings, and winning the program's first ever SEC regular-season title and NCAAT #1 Seed.
By that point, Staley had established herself as a head coach enough to be in the running for MANY top prospects, and had top rated prep prospects such as Ieshia Small, Kaela Davis, Allisha Gray, Te'a Cooper, etc. who had the Gamecocks in their finalist lists, but chose to go elsewhere (although a few still ended up in Columbia indirectly). After the 2014 cycle and 2015 Final Four - plus two more SEC regular-season and tournament titles - the recruiting has burst wide open, even as the success on the courts have continued. In Staley's first 8 cycles at South Carolina, her staff recruited and signed 5 5-star rated prospects (Bone's class was before Hoopgurlz started using star ratings, but her grade was 5-star equivalent) - 4 of those came in the 2014 cycle. In the 6 cycles since, they've signed 16.....
