A’ja Wilson needs help from her guards, and other lessons from USC’s Notre Dame loss
South Carolina women’s basketball has encountered its first setback of the season, losing to Notre Dame in the final of the Gulf Coast Showcase in Florida on Sunday, 92-85.
So, what now?
Should Gamecock fans panic? Is another national championship unlikely? What could Dawn Staley and her team have done to avoid this loss? Is Notre Dame just that good, or is USC worse than most thought?
The short answer to these questions is simple: It’s too soon to tell definitely what this means. South Carolina has played seven of at least 30 games this season, and things will fluctuate a lot over the next few months. What may seem obvious now could look silly by February, or even sooner.
That being said, there are a few lessons that we can draw from the Notre Dame game, and the tournament as a whole.
A’ja Wilson can keep South Carolina in any game, but she can’t win every game
For the third time this season, senior forward A’ja Wilson set a career-high for points in a game, collecting 34 against Notre Dame. While she did have her double-double streak snapped at six, Wilson was flat-out phenomenal against the Irish, scoring 18 points against heavy defense in the fourth quarter as South Carolina tried to rally.
Given Wilson’s huge talent and the departed star players from last year’s title squad, a lot was said this preseason about how the All-American made South Carolina a threat to beat anybody it faced this season. And that’s true. For the first and fourth quarters on Sunday, and for the rest of the tournament, Wilson and the Gamecocks played extremely well against tough competition.
But, and this is hardly news to Dawn Staley, A’ja Wilson can’t beat the Notre Dames of women’s college basketball alone. She needs help down low — which she got from Alexis Jennings, who had a very effective final two games of the tourney — and she needs guards who will help space out the floor and prevent opponents from double-teaming her.
She didn’t have that Sunday, for the most part. Tyasha Harris sat out the pivotal second quarter with two fouls, and Lindsey Spann came down to earth after an otherwordly shooting start to go 3-for-14 from the field. In the first quarter, Notre Dame challenged South Carolina to beat them without Wilson, and everyone responded. After that, however, things got rough, and Wilson had to fight through multiple defenders on a lot of possessions.
Bianca Cuevas-Moore is sorely missed
Related to the point above, a player like senior Bianca Cuevas-Moore brings a much needed spark to South Carolina’s backcourt, whether she’s starting or coming off the bench. Going into the Showcase, Staley said she thought Cuevas-Moore might play a few minutes over the weekend, but that didn’t happen, and her absence was painfully obvious against Notre Dame’s Jackie Young and Arike Ogunbowale.
Without Cuevas-Moore, the Gamecocks’ backup point guard is Lindsey Spann. When Spann struggles, as she did Sunday, Staley can then turn to either freshman Bianca Jackson or junior Doniyah Cliney, neither of whom is a natural point player. That results in A’ja Wilson tying with Harris for the team lead in assists.
Against Rutgers, St. John’s and Notre Dame, South Carolina had its three worst assist-to-turnover ratios of the season. Cuevas-Moore isn’t always the most consistent player, but she provides an extra edge that USC needs against elite competition.
The is far from the final word on South Carolina’s potential success
A peculiar side effect of Connecticut’s complete domination of women’s college hoops over the past decade has been that to some, as soon as a team loses a game, it can no longer be considered a title contender. Because UConn almost never loses, a team that wants to beat them has to be perfect themselves, the reasoning goes.
But of course, that’s not true. And last year’s title should serve as a reminder of that. Staley has said in the past that this year’s team is actually ahead of last season’s squad in some ways, and after the Notre Dame loss, she was relatively upbeat, saying that her team could learn a lot from losing.
In the 2016-2017 season, South Carolina lost four times, including an early nine-point defeat at the hands of Duke, also in the seventh game on the schedule. So USC is in a similar spot, and it came back from that, didn’t it?
Bottom line, Notre Dame is an excellent team and a Final Four contender, the Gamecocks didn’t play well without a key player and were still not that far off. Come March, come even January, things will be a lot different. That’s not to say that the Gamecocks will repeat, but this loss doesn’t mean they won’t.
This story was originally published November 27, 2017 at 5:47 PM with the headline "A’ja Wilson needs help from her guards, and other lessons from USC’s Notre Dame loss."