Gamecock, Seminole women ready for another ‘fight’ for Final Four

Maybe it’s just the human ability to recognize patterns; maybe it’s kismet, the Turkish word for fate.

Two years ago, the South Carolina women’s basketball team was hanging in against Florida State, trailing the whole way, but right in it at the end, needing a play. They drew it up for Tiffany Mitchell, the name: Dallas.

Monday night, they’ll be at the same juncture, the Elite Eight, facing the same opponent, the Seminoles. Where’s the winning team going for the Final Four?

Dallas.

“Obviously, we’re going to put a variation of ‘Dallas’ in because it did work,” said USC coach Dawn Staley, whose team won 80-74 that day.

The Gamecocks are now at the edge of returning to the Final Four for the first time since 2015. They’ll tip off at 9 p.m. at Stockton Arena, and they’ll have a bear of an opponent in front of them.

The Seminoles (28-6) boast a lot of weapons. They’ve got a pair of top-flight shooters in Leticia Romero and Imani Wright. They have a cadre of solid bigs, plus Shakayla Thomas, who can dunk at 5-foot-11 and a player Staley calls the one who got away.

That’s the same thing Sue Semrau said of the late Elite Eight meeting.

There are a few FSU players who still remember the 2015 game, but they said they didn’t remember the details, like how South Carolina only led for 48 seconds of the win. But the tone stuck with them.

“What I remember is that it was a fight,” Romero said. “ I remember finishing the game, and my whole body was hurting. We fought and they did, too. It was a really good game.”

Looking forward, Staley said this edition of the ’Noles reminds her a little bit of Mississippi State. Like the Bulldogs, FSU can force turnovers and have the size to bother a Gamecocks team missing Alaina Coates.

The Seminoles force turnover on more than a quarter of their opponents’ possessions and rebound more than four in 10 of their own misses.

“The theme of this year it seems is turning the ball over, getting people to turn the ball over,” Gamecocks forward A’ja Wilson said. “I think it really did help to prep us for games like this.

“Rebounding is really a thing that we’ve been paying attention to since we lost Alaina because that’s something that she really brought to the table.”

Only two Gamecocks players played in that 2015 game, Wilson, who scored 10 off the bench, and Bianca Cuevas-Moore, who scored nine points in a torrid nine-minute stretch in the first half to keep it close.

Now South Carolina sits at the edge of another big goal. In 2016, the Gamecocks were denied this chance by an upset loss to Syracuse. They came back different, still with high aims.

Monday night, they’ll have it, a familiar foe, a far-off locale and an opportunity to see if it is fate and if it is their moment.

This story was originally published March 26, 2017 at 7:02 PM with the headline "Gamecock, Seminole women ready for another ‘fight’ for Final Four."