A’ja Wilson, USC visit Missouri looking to flush ‘bad taste’ from last year

South Carolina women’s basketball hasn’t lost much in SEC play over the past three years, so the rare occasions when the Gamecocks have tend to stick in the minds of the team’s veteran players.

At 2 p.m. on Sunday, No. 4 USC will take the floor in the arena where it last lost to a conference opponent and try to scrub away some of that past when it plays No. 15 Missouri in the other Columbia – Columbia, Mo. The game will be broadcast nationally on ESPN2.

“The Mizzou game definitely left a bad taste in my mouth,” senior forward A’ja Wilson said of last year’s 62-60 loss, which came down to a last-second layup from the Tigers. “It put me in a situation that I wasn’t really used to being in, in the SEC, we were really dependent on other teams, and that’s not how we operate here.

“I hate losing, so I’m motivated by losing, honestly. Especially going off of last year, I think of every game we lost and I, hopefully, have come back bigger and better and stronger.”

Missouri star injured but expected to return

Missouri is coming off its second loss of the season, falling to LSU 69-65 at home on Thursday. The Tigers (13-2, 1-1 SEC) were without their leading scorer, All-SEC guard Sophie Cunningham, who was recovering from a sprained knee, but USC coach Dawn Staley said her staff expects Cunningham to suit up Sunday.

“What we’ve talked about as far as Missouri is it’s going to be a very, very physical game,” Staley said. “They play extremely well at home. They’re going to scratch and claw and fight their way to a win, and we must be the initiators when it comes to that.”

Before Thursday’s loss, Missouri had reeled off 13 consecutive wins, in large part thanks to Cunningnham’s team-leading 18.2 points per game. Junior forward Cierra Porter also has been an effective piece for coach Robin Pingeton, averaging 10.2 points and 9.5 rebounds per game, and she likely will make life difficult for Wilson and the rest of South Carolina’s frontcourt.

“They’re going to sit back in the paint and dare us to shoot outside shots, and we’re going to have to hit some of them, but we can’t just take them with 22 and 24 seconds left on the shot clock, because that’s playing into their hands,” Staley said of Missouri’s defense. “We need to find some rhythm offensively and at least give our post player a shot at a post entry pass. So for us, we gotta just be patient and move that basketball and see if it will loosen up.”

‘Kind of a rivalry game’

While Staley told reporters that the coaching staff has not stressed a desire for revenge, Wilson said the squad’s older players have let those in their first year with the program know that there’s no love lost for Missouri.

“(The freshmen) already understand it’s kind of a rivalry game going in, and also we know how Missouri plays and they know how we play, so it’s going to be a fun game, and I think we’re all excited, but at the same time we’re not trying to scare the newbies. But it’s a real game, it’s tough early in the season in the SEC to go play at Missouri,” Wilson said.

Since 2013, South Carolina and Missouri have faced off once each year, with the Gamecocks holding a 3-2 edge over that time. In Columbia, Mo., USC is 1-2.

Wilson said whatever the bad blood between the two teams, South Carolina’s players cannot afford to let their emotions get away from them and affect their play. And this will not be the Gamecocks’ only shot at the Tigers this year – they face off again on Jan. 28 in Colonial Life Arena.

“We’re going to ... stay within our system and stay within our roles, that’s the biggest thing. Just get the win,” Wilson said. “Coach has really been forcing us to stay within our system to stay disciplined. So if we stay disciplined, we’ll get our job done.”

Spreading the offense out

In South Carolina’s 88-62 win against Ole Miss on Thursday, the Gamecocks had five players score in double figures, and four players are now averaging more than 10 points per game.

Since the 1999-2000 season, the Gamecocks have had four players average in double figures once – on last year’s national championship squad – and Staley wants to see more of it.

“It seems like nowadays when we hold teams to a certain amount of points, they hold us under our scoring average, so we gotta figure out a way to have performances like we had (Thursday) where we had several people in double-digit scoring,” Staley said.

This story was originally published January 6, 2018 at 1:48 PM with the headline "A’ja Wilson, USC visit Missouri looking to flush ‘bad taste’ from last year."