Streak stopper: No. 1 South Carolina WBB overmatched in road loss to No. 5 UCLA
The streak is dead. It perished in a quick and ugly fashion.
South Carolina, the nation’s top-ranked team and defending national champion, experienced defeat Sunday for the first time in 43 games. Fifth-ranked UCLA stopped the streak by dominating all four quarters for a 77-62 victory in front of a sold-out 13,659 at Pauley Pavilion.
Among those in the crowd were actor Jason Sudeikis, Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh, NFL Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden and Ann Meyers-Drysdale, who led UCLA to its first national championship in women’s basketball in 1978.
The loss was the Gamecocks’ first against the Bruins since Jan. 5, 1981.
“They were relentless,” USC coach Dawn Staley said of the Bruins. “They didn’t allow us to get any clean looks. They ran us off the screens. They did a great job of just locking in and playing 40 minutes of locked-in defense.”
Te-Hina Paopao led the Gamecocks (5-1) with 15 points, eight in the fourth quarter, while Tessa Johnson added 14 off the bench. But the visitors shot just 36.4% for the game, and only 26.5% in the first half.
UCLA (5-0) shot 47.5% from the floor and 47.6% from 3-point range. Londynn Jones led the Bruins with 15 points. Elina Aarnisalo, a freshman from Helsinki, Finland, added 13 points, and Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice each scored 11, with Betts grabbing 14 rebounds.
“I didn’t anticipate them shooting the way they shot the basketball,” Staley said. “I thought our kids fought, but we ran into a buzzsaw today.”
UCLA is the highest-ranked team South Carolina has faced this season. Other future foes currently ranked in the Top 10 include Texas, LSU, UConn and Oklahoma.
South Carolina next travels to South Florida this week for the Fort Myers Tipoff for games on Thursday and Saturday.
Sunday recap
The Gamecocks began Sunday’s game the same way they did against Clemson on Wednesday night, by shooting poorly. Against the Bruins, however, South Carolina never recovered.
USC missed its first nine shots and only made a basket once five minutes and two seconds had expired. For the first quarter, South Carolina missed 11 of its first 12 shots, and 14 of 18 for the period.
UCLA exploited the Gamecocks’ offensive problems to build a 13-point lead twice in the first quarter. Tessa Johnson made two jumpers, one from 3-point range, within 21 seconds to narrow USC’s deficit 18-10 with 49.5 seconds remaining. But the Gamecocks drew no closer during the first half.
In the second quarter, USC failed to score for the first 1:30 as the Bruins extended their advantage to 24-10 with 56 seconds gone in the period. Again Tessa Johnson led a brief surge, joined by Ashlyn Watkins, to close the deficit to 26-17 with 6:45 before halftime. Johnson scored five of the seven points on jumpers.
But the Bruins immediately embarked on a 6-0 surge. Rice’s short-range jumper with 5:33 left extended the margin to 11 points. Ten seconds later, UCLA’s Janiah Barker stole the ball from Paopao, and Aarnisalo finished the possession with a jumper that gave the hosts a 30-17 lead.
Tinea Gardiner’s 3-point shot extended the margin to 33-17 with 4:29 left before halftime.
The Gamecocks scored only five points in the half’s final 6:45, as UCLA expanded its lead to 43-22 at halftime. The hosts led by as many as 23 points in the fourth quarter.
Next four South Carolina games
- Thursday: vs. Iowa State, 12 p.m. on FOX (Fort Myers Tipoff)
- Saturday: vs. Purdue, 11 a.m. on Women’s Sports Network (Fort Myers Tipoff)
- Dec. 5: vs. Duke, 9 p.m. on ESPN (SEC-ACC Challenge)
- Dec. 8: at TCU, 7 p.m. (Hoopfest Women’s Basketball Classic)
This story was originally published November 24, 2024 at 5:51 PM.