South Carolina still NCAA’s No. 1 seed despite SEC loss, ESPN bracket expert says
Dawn Staley was honest after South Carolina’s 64-62 SEC tournament championship loss to Kentucky on Sunday.
Losing to the Wildcats hurt, and there were sad faces in the USC locker room. The Gamecocks held a 15-point lead midway through the third quarter and gave it away on a tough fourth-quarter effort that saw Kentucky outscore them 21-7.
But the ultimate goal for the nation’s top-ranked team is still in view — even if the finish in Nashville stings.
“Obviously, this was one of our goals of the season,” Staley said. “It wasn’t the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is still very much in front of us.”
In the minutes after the SEC championship game, ESPN bracketologist Charlie Creme via Twitter projected that South Carolina would retain its No. 1 overall positioning for the NCAA tournament ahead of next week’s Selection Sunday announcement. The bracket reveal for this year’s tournament will be televised by ESPN at 8 p.m. on March 13.
“With that upset Kentucky is now a 7 seed. SC stays the No. 1 overall team. 10-0 vs. NET top-25 and wins over Stanford and NC St. The Gamecocks had a big cushion,” Creme tweeted.
The Gamecocks built their resume through the non-conference and SEC slates, which ended up in a 27-1 record throughout the regular season with 11 wins over teams ranked in the AP Top 25. South Carolina’s record stands at 29-2 after the SEC tournament.
South Carolina’s two losses came at both bookends of its conference slate — in its SEC opener at Missouri on Dec. 30 and in the conference tournament championship to Kentucky.
Despite the Gamecocks’ two losses, Staley said there are enough positives to lean on as they prepare for the postseason.
“We’ve put ourselves in a really good position,” Staley said. “Going into the NCAA tournament, it doesn’t feel good, but we’ve got a lot of feel-goods throughout the season that we’ll draw on.”
South Carolina star forward Aliyah Boston, who scored 21 points with 11 rebounds in the Gamecocks’ loss to Kentucky, said the team will continue to work and think about the SEC tournament championship game as they prepare for the postseason, locking into details.
Staley wasn’t worried about Boston’s reaction to the loss.
“She’ll say the job didn’t get done because we didn’t win the basketball game,” Staley said. “True champions — that’s what they do. They face the music, no matter what’s playing. We’ll bounce back.”
With plenty of material to use to improve, South Carolina will look to move forward from two straight games with fourth-quarter lapses as it preps for the NCAA tournament.
The Gamecocks went the last 10 minutes of Saturday’s conference semifinal win over Ole Miss without a field goal, and they were outscored by 14 in the fourth quarter of the championship against Kentucky.
Staley said those quarters will give South Carolina something to take to the drawing board.
“We’re not a bad basketball team,” Staley said. “We just played two bad quarters at the worst time. We’ve got to work on just executing on both sides of the basketball. ... Not the fact that we don’t score, it’s the fact that we gave up 21 points in the fourth quarter. We’ve got to go back and see where our defense is failing us.”
Heading into the SEC tournament as the nation’s No. 1 one team, South Carolina remains likely to host the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament at Colonial Life Arena. The first round will be held from March 18-19, with second-round games March 20-21.
This story was originally published March 6, 2022 at 6:49 PM.
