South Carolina bounces back from loss to rout No. 17 Kentucky at home
Down the stretch during Thursday’s loss to Tennessee, South Carolina women’s basketball guard Zia Cooke was laboring, leading the team in scoring but shooting at a low percentage, under 30%, to do it.
Afterward, coach Dawn Staley said Cooke didn’t need to make all of her 22 shots. But if she made them at better rate, the Gamecocks would have a good opportunity to win.
Sure enough, against No. 17 Kentucky on Sunday, Cooke was far more efficient, and the Gamecocks were far more pleased with the result, claiming a 76-55 victory to get back on track in SEC play.
“Tonight was perfect. The energy, the effort, the willingness to not be denied and take the ball to the basket and make layups, get fouled,” Staley said of Cooke’s performance. “When she’s just taking primarily outside shots and not making them and continues to do that, it hurts us. But today, I thought she was attacking all three areas — layups, midrange, 3s ... I liked where she was defensively. The energy, the effort, the engagement, the pursuit of the ball. Just an all-around great game.”
Cooke had South Carolina’s first five points and finished with a game-high 21 on 7-of-17 shooting. As Staley noted, she sank a pair of 3-pointers but also got to the line twice for “traditional” three-point plays, finishing layups and drawing fouls.
“Especially with how hard we work, to see us lose like that was definitely a bummer,” Cooke said of how she and team reacted after the Tennessee defeat. “But we came together, we talked about it, we practice hard, and we knew we would come out victorious tonight as long as we stuck with the game plan.”
Cooke led four Gamecocks in double figures, with classmate Laeticia Amihere posting a double-double of 12 points and 13 rebounds. South Carolina also reclaimed its dominance inside after having an uncharacteristic struggle against Tennessee — the Gamecocks pulled down 48% of their own misses and outscored Kentucky 46-20 in the paint.
“The third quarter, it got away from us,” Kentucky coach Kyra Elzy said. “But overall, we just did not have the toughness that we needed to rebound. We did it in spurts, but not consistently enough, and you can’t do that against South Carolina, which is a very talented team and aggressive rebounders.”
3 OBSERVATIONS
1. LeLe’s Day
With a rescheduled Ole Miss game set for Thursday, South Carolina treated Sunday as Senior Day, honoring the team’s lone veteran, LeLe Grissett, before the game with a video tribute and a ceremony on the court. Grissett also got the start, just the sixth of her career and her first in two years.
“The first five seconds, I couldn’t breathe. (Staley) said every senior goes through it, but I just couldn’t breathe. I ain’t gonna lie, 10 seconds. It got me — the down-and-back and then the down-and-back — but then I was able to breathe,” Grissett said.
And Grissett was active in the minutes she got, attacking inside and contributing six points in a big 10-0 run in the second quarter after the Gamecocks went down 15-14. She finished with 13 points and six rebounds, most of it in the first half.
2. Third quarter bounceback
Against Tennessee on Thursday, South Carolina struggled mightily in the third quarter, letting a 15-point lead evaporate and getting outscored 28-17.
On Sunday, the Gamecocks didn’t let that happen again. Holding a four-point halftime advantage after Kentucky ended the second quarter on a 9-2 run, USC got out in front early in the third with a 9-2 run of its own.
After trading baskets during the mid-stretch of the period, the Gamecocks got yet another little burst to stretch their lead to 15 — Zia Cooke hit a difficult fast-break layup through contact and completed the three-point play, then forced another turnover and fed Destanni Henderson for another fast-break layup. Cooke finished the flurry by draining a 3-pointer at the buzzer.
All told, South Carolina outscored Kentucky 23-12 in the frame.
3. Howard held in check
Kentucky is led by star guard Rhyne Howard, considered one of the favorites for SEC Player of the Year honors. On Sunday, however, she scored just 12 points, one of her lowest totals of the season and well below her 19.7 average coming into the contest. Hounded primarily by LeLe Grissett and sophomore guard Brea Beal, she was often forced to pass out of tight defense. And when she did shoot, she was a paltry 2 of 11.
“We tried to limit the amount of times that she came off with her right hand,” Staley said. “So we just tried to force her left, and if they set ball screens on the right side, we did ice her right, meaning we knew she was going to go right, so we actually ended up trapping her in the third and fourth quarters.”
NEXT USC BASKETBALL GAME
Who: No. 2 South Carolina (18-3, 13-1 SEC) vs. Ole Miss (9-9, 3-9)
When: 1 p.m. Thursday
Where: Colonial Life Arena
Watch: SEC Network Plus
This story was originally published February 21, 2021 at 4:57 PM.
