No. 1 South Carolina takes care of rival Clemson, sets program record with win streak
Beating your rival for a 14th straight time: Pretty good.
Setting a major school record in the process: Even better.
There’s work to be done after a slow start, but the No. 1 South Carolina women’s basketball team had little resistance in running past rival Clemson, 77-45, Wednesday night in front of 5,008 fans at Littlejohn Coliseum.
It wasn’t the 69-point blowout that happened in Columbia last year (109-40), but the 32-point win was still enough for the Clemson women’s basketball social media account to jokingly decline to share the final score on X (formerly Twitter).
Guard Te-Hina Paopao had a team-high 13 points and USC dominated defensively as it beat Clemson for a 14th time in a row dating back to 2010 and won a program-record 43rd consecutive game dating back to the beginning of last season.
The team’s previous record was a 42-game streak spanning the 2022 NCAA Tournament and the entire 2023 season up until a Final Four loss to Iowa.
Coach Dawn Staley’s reigning champs moved to 5-0 ahead of their trip to Los Angeles this weekend to play No. 5 UCLA, the highest ranked opponent they’ve faced.
“When you’re getting everybody’s best at the beginning of the game, we get out of sorts and sometimes probably be more tight than we need to be,” Staley said. “But once we settle in, we can see things coming at us and make adjustments on the fly.”
Clemson first-year coach Shawn Poppie, hired away from Chattanooga to reinvigorate a Tigers program that had stagnated under former coach Amanda Butler, had his team ready early.
But Wednesday’s 32-point loss amounted to a measuring-stick game against the country’s No. 1 team ... which just so happens to also play two-and-a-half hours away and is Clemson’s biggest rival in what’s currently a lopsided battle.
USC led 29-17 at halftime and used a 22-point third quarter to run away with the game against a Clemson team that quickly went cold from the field.
Alabama transfer guard Loyal McQueen had a team-high 15 points for Clemson, which fell to 3-1 and lost a seventh-straight home game to the Gamecocks.
“My hopes are (the players) can take that we have an opportunity to be really darn good competing at the highest level,” Poppie said. “I mean, we showed spurts in that game where we were going neck and neck with the No. 1 team in the country.”
“We’re just not able to do it for 40 minutes yet.”
Slow start
When these rivals met last November in Columbia’s Colonial Life Arena, the score after a quarter was No. 1 South Carolina 31, Clemson 6.
The first quarter score on Wednesday night? Clemson 11, No. 1 South Carolina 10.
A lot of that had to do with the Gamecocks’ poor shooting. South Carolina had 10 more shots than Clemson in the opening 10 minutes — 21 attempts to 11 — but made just five of them.
USC shooting 23.8% from the field, combined with some turnovers and extra energy from Clemson’s players in their first game against a power conference opponent this season, made for a surprising opening frame at Littlejohn Coliseum.
Clemson’s lead stretched to game-high five points (17-12) with 5:18 remaining in the second quarter. It helped, at that point, that USC was shooting just 3 of 14 on layups.
South Carolina proceeded to end the first half on a scorching 17-0 run over 4:58 of game time and went from down five points to leading by 12 (29-17) on the road.
Block party
USC entered this game with a clear size advantage.
Between forwards Ashlyn Watkins, Chloe Kitts, Sania Feagin and Joyce Edwards, the Gamecocks have four post players in their regular rotation who are 6-foot-2 or taller.
Clemson, meanwhile, starts a four-guard lineup and only has one starter, 6-2 forward Tessa Miller, listed above 6 feet.
The end result, though it took a while to develop: Clemson settling for a lot of 3-pointers and jumpers. When the Tigers did drive, they found themselves either fading from the basket — or getting swatted by South Carolina, which had six blocks.
The Tigers wound up shooting just 13 of 51 (25%) from the field, comfortably a season low, and got out-rebounded 54-31 and 23-7 on offensive rebounds.
The Tigers also trailed 27-5 in second-chance points.
Tessa Johnson returns
Johnson, a key sophomore reserve for the Gamecocks, hurt her ankle during South Carolina’s win over then-No. 9 N.C. State earlier this month and had missed the team’s past two games.
But she suited up as expected against Clemson and provided a jolt of energy off the bench, as the reigning NCAA Final Four All-Tournament team honoree often does.
Johnson’s 3-pointer at the halftime buzzer put the cherry on top of South Carolina’s 17-0 run, and she finished with eight points in her first game in two weeks.
She was one of 11 Gamecocks to score on Wednesday. Paopao had a team-high 13, Watkins had 10 and nine other players had between three and eight points in another balanced effort from a team stacked with McDonald’s All-Americans.
Next four USC WBB games
- Sun Nov. 4: at No. 5 UCLA (4 p.m. FS1)
- Thurs Nov. 28: vs. No. 8 Iowa State in Fort Myers Tipoff (1:30 p.m., FOX)
- Sat Nov. 30: vs. Purdue in Fort Myers Tipoff (11 a.m., Women’s Sports Network)
- Thurs Dec. 5: vs. No. 14 Duke in SEC-ACC Challenge (9 p.m., ESPN)
This story was originally published November 20, 2024 at 6:47 PM.
