How South Carolina women’s basketball is learning lessons through winning
South Carolina women’s basketball has a perfect 35-0 record.
But in the SEC Tournament quarterfinal against Tennessee, and Friday’s Sweet 16 game against Indiana — both performances were far from flawless.
The former came down to a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from center Kamilla Cardoso, the first triple of her career that saved the Gamecocks from what those on the bench thought was a surefire defeat. The latter (which USC won 79-75) was iced by big shots down the stretch from Raven Johnson, including a 3-pointer with 58 seconds remaining.
Johnson spoke after Friday’s NCAA Tournament game about how this South Carolina team has threats all over the court. In the paint. On the perimeter.
“We have everything,” she said. “How can you guard us?”
Coach Dawn Staley chimed in: “We gave up a 17-, 20-point lead.”
All year, the Gamecocks have been learning lessons from little failures within their overall pristine season. Losing their 22-point lead over the Hoosiers on Friday night was one of them. So was losing the 23-point lead over the Lady Vols in Greenville on March 9.
Winning can make a team complacent, yes, but it’s those seemingly insurmountable challenges that have woken this team up.
“I think games like these just light a fire under our butt,” Te-Hina Paopao told The State after the game. “Like ‘Hey, reality sets in.’ ...We got to lock in and get those 50-50 balls and do the little things because that matters at the end of the day.
“And that’s what these type of games help us do. It helps us feel a way that we don’t want to feel.”
If they could avoid such challenges entirely, they would. A lot of the problem Friday felt like fatigue, junior guard Bree Hall said. But this is March. And one off day can send you home.
“We’d rather not have a close game like this, of course,” Hall said after the Sweet 16 game, “but I think it’ll be beneficial just because when the pressure is on, we have to be able to execute, and we’ll look back at this game and see that we were able to execute and defend, as well.”
South Carolina gets 3-seed Oregon State next in the Elite Eight (1 p.m. Sunday, ABC). The winner advances to next weekend’s Final Four in Cleveland.
Until then, Friday’s performance and too-tight-for-comfort ending proved to Staley what she already knew: This is a tough basketball team. This is a team that hates losing. And this is a team, through good games and bad games, always finds a way to pull through.
“They are able to make plays on both sides of the basketball through great play, through shoddy play, through having a lead, having built a lead and then getting it down to one and having it be a one-possession game, that they were able to play their way out of it,” Staley said.
“We are the habits that we’ve created, good and bad.”
This story was originally published March 30, 2024 at 7:00 AM.
