No. 1 South Carolina’s depth carrying Gamecocks through SEC tournament
The South Carolina women’s basketball team features three All-SEC performers on its roster. After two SEC tournament games, none of those three have led the team in scoring.
Victaria Saxton led No. 1 USC with 19 points in a win against Arkansas, and Laeticia Amihere scored a season-high 17 points to go along with seven assists and six rebounds in Saturday’s 80-51 win over Ole Miss.
Saxton’s 19 points were the most she scored in nearly two years, and Amihere was just one point shy of a career-high she set last year.
Coach Dawn Staley has nine All-Americans on her 14-player roster, and no one averages more than 27 minutes per game. Only three average more than 20 minutes. But the team has bought into its goal to win championships, and the individual numbers haven’t been a point of emphasis for the players.
“When you have a team full of players that just want to win, I don’t think any decisions I make to play them or not to play them hurts their confidence, and that’s because we communicate,” Staley said. “We communicate extremely well.”
Through two games in the tournament, the Gamecocks have 52 assists on 70 made shots. The team doesn’t play much iso ball, and often looks to the post for its scoring. Even with reigning National Player of the Year Aliyah Boston, the team doesn’t always lean on one player in games.
No South Carolina player had a 20-point game until Zia Cooke scored 20 points against Liberty. USC still finished in the top 10 nationally with 81.3 points per game in the regular season.
The team has plenty of capable scorers, though. Eight different players have led the team in scoring throughout the course of the season.
During Saturday’s game, starting senior guard Kierra Fletcher exited the game with an injury, and redshirt freshman Raven Johnson checked in to take over at point guard. Amihere and Cooke have also spent time at that position this year.
Johnson, who leads the team in assists, ended the game with five dimes.
“I was proud,” Staley said. “I think sometimes, it does shake you up a little bit when you are not going in at the time that you usually go in. So she got jolted into getting out there, playing sooner than normal.”
The team averaged 37.1 bench points per game in the regular season. So far in the tournament, it’s averaging 40.
“I think our bench is great asset to our team, and just being able to rely on anybody and call on anybody at any given moment is a great asset to have,” Amihere said.
USC returned to the SEC title game for the eighth time in nine seasons. The Gamecocks have won six conference tournaments since their first appearance in 2015.
South Carolina lost to Kentucky in last year’s championship game on a game-winning 3-point shot, which was the last loss before it began a 37-game winning streak.
The assortment of weapons that South Carolina has on both sides of the ball gives it the chance to find offense from anywhere. The undefeated Gamecocks need just one more win — against the Tennessee Volunteers — to capture another SEC tournament championship, and then they’ll begin their national title defense.
“When we have games like this where everybody’s contributing, I don’t think there’s any team in the country that can beat us,” Cooke said.
This story was originally published March 4, 2023 at 8:46 PM.
