Why South Carolina needs to play its ‘best basketball’ in final week of regular season
There’s just one week remaining in the regular season for South Carolina women’s basketball. The Gamecocks need to be playing their “best basketball” right now, head coach Dawn Staley said.
Not next week in Greenville for the SEC Tournament. Not in March for the NCAA Tournament.
Right now.
“It can’t wait until after Selection Sunday, can’t wait until you’re in the finals of the SEC championship.” Staley said Wednesday. “It’s now. These last two regular season games and so forth. I think we’re moving in the right direction as far as getting everybody playing great at the right time. It takes some losses for you to feel that, and some losses for you to correct some things. And also just to get some other players to elevate their play, and we’re seeing that.”
South Carolina will travel to Oxford, Mississippi on Thursday for its final SEC road game of the season against Ole Miss. Gamecock fans will want to get a pot of coffee brewing for the game, as the two teams will face off at 9 p.m. on ESPN.
Ole Miss (18-8, 9-5 SEC) is coming off a 68-66 win over Missouri on Sunday and has won three of its last four games. The Rebels sport a defense ranked in the top 25 of several statistical categories that has the potential to post a challenge to the Gamecocks.
“They play in a smaller lineup so they can pressure a lot more at all five positions — a lot,” Staley said. “They want to be disruptive to your offense. They want to turn you over for easy buckets, they rebound the heck out of the basketball. They give themselves a chance to win, being able to do some of the things that don’t put so much strain on your half-court offense.”
BartTorvik.com, a basketball analytics site, gives the Gamecocks an 80% of winning the game and has them projected to win by eight points on Thursday. With two games remaining on the schedule, Staley said there isn’t really anything extremely specific she wants to see on the court.
She just wants to see wins.
“At this stage of the game it’s just about winning,” Staley said. “Ugly wins count just as much as the pretty ones. You’ve just got to bear down. Against an Ole Miss team it’s just that: Taking care of the balls, dominating the boards, and it’s defending like we defend.”
The last two games of the season will be crucial for the Gamecocks.
South Carolina is currently tied with Texas in the No. 1 spot in the SEC standings. Neither team holds a tie-breaker over one another given that both teams have beaten each other. If they win their remaining two games, South Carolina and Texas would both be 15-1 in SEC play. So the next tie breaker (which is essentially record against SEC opponents) would also be impossible to break.
That would leave the fate of the No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament up to a coin flip.
Anything could happen in the next week. If South Carolina wins out and Texas loses one (or both) of its remaining matchups against Mississippi State and Florida, then the Gamecocks would have some wiggle room and potentially not have to worry about a tie breaker.
“We control our own destiny,” Staley said. “And then if we take care of business, and Texas takes care of business, then our fate is in the coin toss.”
South Carolina schedule: Upcoming games
- Thursday: at Ole Miss, 9 p.m. (ESPN or SEC Network)
- Sundat: vs. Kentucky, 2 p.m. (ESPN)
- March 5-9: SEC women’s basketball tournament in Greenville
