Gamecocks not fooled by Tennessee’s record

South Carolina has broken record after record over the past four years, seemingly notching another every time they take the floor. Looking up the original record-holders hasn’t been difficult – like most SEC marks, it’s Tennessee.

There’s no question the Gamecocks have surpassed the Lady Vols as the queens of the conference, and that’s always lurking in USC coach Dawn Staley’s mind. One, she knows that as good as USC has been the past four years, Tennessee still walks past eight national championship trophies every day.

Two, Staley expected this and wants to keep it where it is.

“I’m motivated by what took place the first few years here at South Carolina,” Staley said. “We want to continue to be the best team in this conference. We know we’re going to take some hits and we know we’re the targets, and we’ve got to keep our guard up.”

That approach served them well in practice after a rough win at Georgia. Monday’s game hosting Tennessee, despite the Lady Vols riding a rollercoaster season and the game at Colonial Life Arena, isn’t anything to take lightly.

“Sometimes I feel like we kind of get complacent with the other team, playing down with them,” A’ja Wilson said. “But later on in the game, we come to start playing USC basketball and our system.”

The Gamecocks start the second half of the SEC season with the Lady Vols, who beat two top-10 teams this year (Stanford and Notre Dame) and lost to Ole Miss and Auburn. USC beat Tennessee in Knoxville last year to clinch its third consecutive regular-season championship and take its third in a row in the series, after the Lady Vols had won all but two of the previous 47.

There’s a lot of familiarity. Tennessee star Diamond DeShields played her freshman year at North Carolina with USC junior Allisha Gray. Gray’s backcourt counterpart, Kaela Davis, grew up playing with and against DeShields in prep and AAU ball.

USC beat the Bulldogs in its last game, but it was sloppy. Georgia disrupted the Gamecocks’ tempo with a zone defense and USC was tentative to challenge it. It took the Bulldogs creeping within four points with seven minutes to go for the Gamecocks to put the game away.

The Lady Vols have won their past two after a three-game SEC losing streak, with the win over Notre Dame in the middle. One never knows which Tennessee team will show up, but the Gamecocks fully expect the one that beat the Irish.

“With Tennessee, you’re always playing a tradition,” Staley said. “We all have played inconsistent at times throughout the season, but we know they rise to the challenge of playing really good competition and we’ll see a Tennessee team that kind of showed up for the Notre Dame game.”

This story was originally published January 29, 2017 at 3:50 PM with the headline "Gamecocks not fooled by Tennessee’s record."