Is it national championship or bust, and 3 other questions facing South Carolina

On Thursday, SEC women’s basketball will officially kick off with media day in Nashville, Tennessee. Two players and the coach from all of the conference’s 14 schools will be in attendance.

In 2016-2017, the SEC advanced eight teams to the NCAA tournament, the most of any conference in the country, and accounted for both national finalists — Mississippi State and champion South Carolina. This year, however, the conference may be even more competitive, as teams like Tennessee and Georgia reload with talented freshman classes and Texas A&M and Mississippi State return elite players of their own.

In the face of all this, here are the most pressing questions facing Dawn Staley and her Gamecocks.

Is it national championship or bust?

At the end of the day, this is all that really matters. While it is reasonable to expect a step back with the loss of three starters, South Carolina is the defending national champion, bringing back quite possibly the best player in the country in A’ja Wilson.

Fans are riding high off the team’s glorious 2017 run. Expectations are lofty. Staley is bringing in a solid crop of freshmen and has transfers in Alexis Jennings and Lindsey Spann who should contribute right away. A repeat is not completely out of the question.

But it seems extraordinarily unlikely that the Gamecocks will dodge Connecticut two years in a row, and Staley has never bested Geno Auriemma’s squad. Can you really be considered the best women’s college team in the country if you haven’t beaten the Huskies?

It will be interesting to hear how Staley frames her own expectations for this season. While she will almost certainly say the team is shooting for another title, she may also acknowledge that the Gamecocks can have success without winning it all again.

Will chemistry be an issue in the early going?

One of the biggest hurdles for South Carolina in the early going will be matching the contributions made by departed seniors Kaela Davis, Allisha Gray and Alaina Coates, all of whom were taken in the WNBA draft.

In their place, the Gamecocks will likely start some combination of Spann, Jennings, senior Bianca Cuevas-Moore, junior Doniyah Cliney, sophomore Mikiah Herbert Harrigan and freshmen Lele Grissett and LaDazhia Williams.

Outside of Cuevas-Moore, none of those replacements have any significant starting experience with South Carolina, and the Gamecocks will be immediately tested against traditional powers like Maryland, Duke and potentially Notre Dame before conference play even rolls around. If things start badly, this team might struggle to pull things together.

During her first meeting with the media this season, Staley was blunt about the need for her players to improve and about their relative inexperience playing with each other. Hopefully her update this Thursday is just as candid.

How will other SEC teams defend against A’ja Wilson, and how will she respond?

Wilson is the defending conference player of the year, a two-time All-American and the early favorite for national player of the year this season. In other words, she’s a pretty freaking good basketball player, and everyone knows it.

What’s changed from last year is Wilson’s supporting cast. It remains to be seen whether these new players can be as effective as the old ones.

That matters for Wilson because, as Staley has said, teams will likely swarm her with two or more defenders this year unless her teammates can prove themselves to be effective scoring threats. Even then, it seems likely that SEC opponents will be draped all over her this year, trying just about anything to stop her.

Wilson attempted one 3-point shot all of last year. Her game is in the post, battling towards the basket. But if Staley wants to keep her star fresh, she’ll likely need to get creative in generating opportunities.

Who, if anyone, can stop South Carolina from its fifth straight SEC title?

Don’t laugh — it could happen. The Southeastern Conference is loaded with talent and teams capable of knocking off the Gamecocks.

Mississippi State returns All-American guard Victoria Vivians and UConn-slayer Morgan William. Tennessee has two all-SEC players in Jaime Nared and Mercedes Russell. Texas A&M returns four starters from a 22-12 squad. Missouri has guard Sophie Cunningham, an offensive dynamo and honorable mention All-American.

At the end of last season, the SEC had four teams ranked in the top 25. This year, there could conceivably be five or six. The rest of the conference is catching up to the Gamecocks, and while they should still be considered the favorites to win again, it will be challenging.

This story was originally published October 18, 2017 at 11:06 AM with the headline "Is it national championship or bust, and 3 other questions facing South Carolina."