Not this year: Aggies upend Gamecocks to win SEC regular-season conference crown
At halftime Sunday, South Carolina women’s basketball was poised to take over in College Station.
Yes, the No. 5 Gamecocks trailed No. 3 Texas A&M by a point, but they had the momentum, with a 10-0 surge to erase a large deficit. They traded baskets and positioned themselves for a strong second half, just like they had in wins over Arkansas and Kentucky.
Instead, a disastrous third quarter set them back, and a furious fourth-quarter comeback wasn’t enough. South Carolina fell 65-57 to the Aggies.
“I love our effort, I love our energy,” USC coach Dawn Staley said. “We’re a program that moral victories, moral comebacks, that is not a part of our program. We’re expected to win championships and this was within our reach. And we just, just ran out of gas and didn’t have enough in the tank today. But let me just say, I mean, Texas A&M played as strongly as they’ve played all season long. And we got beat by a really good basketball team.”
With the loss, the Gamecocks were denied a sixth SEC regular season championship in the past eight years. The Aggies, meanwhile, claimed their first league title and the No. 1 seed in this week’s conference tournament.
It took USC nearly seven minutes to score in that fateful third quarter, and A&M outscored Staley’s squad 19-8 total, stretching its lead to a dozen points.
“Missed layups,” Staley said of what went wrong. “It’s been the nemesis of our four losses and sprinkled in between. And I just think it forced us to have to defend and they got out in transition and they were able to score. They controlled the tempo a little bit during that stretch. But it’s deflating when you’ve missed the layup and you go back and give up an easy bucket at the other end.”
The Gamecocks went 2 for 5 on layups in the third quarter and 13 for 27 on the game. But they refused to go away quietly, charging back into the contest with a 12-1 run in the fourth frame to close within three points. That was as close as they got, though, missing eight of their final nine shots.
“They just kept hanging in and hanging and hanging,” Texas A&M coach Gary Blair said. “Both of us were trying to monitor our situations at the five position. But one thing we wanted to make sure, we were still going to attack (Aliyah) Boston, knowing how many blocked shots (she gets). What we wanted to do is when she blocked a shot, if it didn’t go out of bounds, we wanted to make sure we got it.”
Sure enough, sophomore forward Aliyah Boston tallied 11 points, 11 rebounds and two blocks for the Gamecocks but also delat with some foul trouble early. Junior guard Destanni Henderson and sophomore guard Zia Cooke had 15 points each to lead USC.
3 OBSERVATIONS
1. Back-and-forth battle
From the opening tip, intensity was high with the conference title at stake. Within the first four minutes, there had been three jump balls as defenders swarmed ball-handlers and forced turnovers.
The Gamecocks and the Aggies, the top two defensive scoring teams in the SEC, lived up to that billing by holding each other to worse than 43% from the field. There were 31 combined blocks and steals in the contest, as well as two ties and 10 lead changes in the first half alone.
In a game of runs, South Carolina got bursts of 6-0 in the first quarter and 10-0 in the second to erase deficits, using its speed to get out in transition, scoring 12 fast-break points by halftime. Texas A&M, meanwhile, took advantage of some second chances early to keep pace.
“We probably got eight points in the first half just on a few garbage plays,” Blair said. “They might have blocked something or we dumped it underneath and we got those eight easy points that we had to have to get to halftime.”
2. Boston’s bigger role
After the Gamecocks defeated Ole Miss, coach Dawn Staley made it clear — Aliyah Boston couldn’t take just four shots in a game, as she did against the Rebels.
And sure enough, Boston was fed the ball a lot more Sunday, resulting in her reaching four shots in the first half, even with foul trouble keeping her on the bench for a good stretch.
Into the second half, the Aggies deployed a matchup zone defense to frustrate Boston, and she wound up going 0 for 3 from the field in that difficult third quarter. In the fourth, though, she came roaring back with five points, five rebounds and two assists, helping orchestrate the comeback.
“We got Aliyah the ball more times in the paint, in the little block a lot. So I don’t think they took her out of the game. I mean I liked the fact that we fed her a whole lot,” Staley said. “She commands a crowd, and she’s gonna have to play through the crowd sometimes, and she’s gonna have to facilitate and pass out. I thought she did a great job with not forcing as much, kicking it out.”
3. 3-point boom and bust
South Carolina entered the game attempting just 12.9 3-pointers per game — the percentage of its shots from 3 ranked fifth lowest in the country.
On Sunday, however, the Aggies made an emphasis of packing it inside and daring the Gamecocks to let it fly from the perimeter, especially in the second half.
“We really went out there and tried to play inside out,” Texas A&M forward N’dea Jones said. “We kept reminding each other like, oh, go under the screens, oh, take a step back from her, help each other out, double Aliyah Boston and rotate.”
From South Carolina’s perspective, the big deficit meant the 3-pointers were necessary, leading to 22 of 68 field goals coming from deep. The Gamecocks made just five for a 22.7% clip, but three of them did come late at a critical point to narrow the deficit. Ultimately, though, USC went 1 for 8 from distance in the final five minutes.
“We were down by 15 points. We weren’t going to be able to 2 them and get back in the game,” Staley said. “So we took our chances with trying to cut the lead and we did it by 3s and 2s. So that’s what I wanted our players to do, to try to get some momentum back in the game and shoot some 3s and, you know, it helped and it hurt us.”
NEXT USC BASKETBALL GAME
What: SEC tournament quarterfinals
Who: No. 2 seed South Carolina vs. 7 vs. 10 winner
When: Friday, March 7
Where: Bon Secours Wellness Arena, Greenville
Watch: SEC Network
This story was originally published February 28, 2021 at 4:00 PM.
