How No. 2 South Carolina used staunch defense to thrive in tough SEC stretch
South Carolina women’s basketball entered the new year with a challenging start to SEC play. The Gamecocks started with Missouri and Mississippi State on the road before returning home to face Texas A&M.
Following that? A gauntlet of a five-game stretch against Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, LSU and Tennessee — all ranked in the Top 25.
On Monday night, Dawn Staley and the Gamecocks left the Food City Center in Knoxville victorious. Their 70-63 win over Tennessee gives South Carolina a perfect 8-0 start halfway through conference play while adding five more ranked wins to its resume.
“Let’s just say we’re looking forward to the bye week that we have ahead,” Joyce Edwards said.
USC won’t play again until Sunday, when the Gamecocks will return home to play a struggling Auburn team that is 11-10 on the year and 2-6 in SEC play.
South Carolina defeated its last five opponents, all of which are some of the best in the country in one stat or another, by an average of 18.6 points per game. It was a challenging stretch and a testament to the will of Staley’s squad.
“Our team is resilient,” Staley said. “They can win a lot of different ways. I think the biggest pull on this stretch is mentally. Obviously, it’s a physical battle just to play in the SEC, but to do it against the top teams in this conference is hard. It’s hard. It took a lot of, for us, togetherness and a lot of different styles of play.”
Tennessee gave South Carolina a run for its money late in the game on Monday. The Volunteers nearly battled all the way back from a 22-point deficit before losing by seven. Signs of fatigue showed late for the Gamecocks, but Edwards and her teammates pushed through.
“We knew that these games were gonna be tough,” Edwards said. “We knew that fatigue was gonna settle in, but we just have to be mentally strong and push through.”
After the game, Staley said she preferred to have the matchup with Tennessee — a team known for its high-tempo, 3-point-heavy offense — come last in the current five-game stretch.
“It’s hard to recover after having to play this style of play and have to go back out and play another game,” Staley said. “It happened at the right time when we got a little break where we’ll decompress.
“Proud of our team for just managing it, just taking one game at a time and winning and still being in the position of being undefeated in this league. It is not for the faint at heart, to be in this league and to be undefeated and having played the schedule that we’ve played.”
South Carolina’s defense was arguably the most impressive part of its last five wins. The Gamecocks held some of the top-scoring offenses in the country to an average of 57.4 points per game.
Tennessee, LSU, Oklahoma and Texas were all held to the fewest points they’ve scored in a single game this season by South Carolina.
“We know defense is one thing that we can control and we come out, we execute it,” Edwards said. “We harp on it in practice. We prepare for it and we just do it.”
The Volunteers, the nation’s No. 1 scoring offense, learned the hard way just how dominant South Carolina’s defense has been. Tennessee was held to new season lows in shooting percentage (30.7%), 3-point percentage (11.5%) and field goals made (23) in the game.
“We knew they were going to come in and take a lot of shots,” Staley said. “A lot of 3s, a lot of, I would say, quick shots. It’s making sure you can test them, making sure that they don’t go on a run like they went on a run. We took better shots. I think we could have secured our lead a little bit better, but we didn’t. ... We do a really good job at linking up and connecting and making sure that we’re not giving them too many wide-open looks.”
This story was originally published January 28, 2025 at 7:22 AM.
