Ohio State, Duke, UConn highlight USC women’s schedule

It was already known that Dawn Staley had scheduled extremely aggressive for next season.

Wednesday’s announcement of the non-conference schedule made it official.

The Gamecocks will take on seven non-conference teams that won at least 20 games and 10 that made the postseason, including the NCAA and WNIT champions. USC begins with a home game against Ohio State, which returns the country’s leading scorer, and ends against Connecticut, the three-time defending national champ.

“We have put together a challenging non-conference schedule that will help prepare us for another Final Four run,” Staley said in a statement. “The home slate was made with Gamecock Nation in mind. They have made Colonial Life Arena one of the toughest places to play in the country and look forward to hosting the nation’s premier programs for some exciting games.”

Some of the games are return contests after USC went on the road last year (Hampton, Duke, UConn) and the Gamecocks will return to Myrtle Beach (Dec. 19, East Carolina). They’ll spend Thanksgiving in Hawaii and play three true road games – at Clemson (although the Tigers are in Jervey Gym this year, not Littlejohn Coliseum), at UCLA and at Hawaii in the last game of the Waikiki Beach Marriott Rainbow Wahine Showdown.

There aren’t many breaks. After Ohio State, USC is away from home for five of its next six games. The Gamecocks are at home for all but one game for the rest of the non-conference schedule, but that starts with Duke and ends with UConn.

The SEC schedule, which should be released later this month, will combine to give the Gamecocks 10 games against teams that finished in the Top 25. Twenty-one games will come against postseason teams from a year ago.

The Gamecocks’ permanent SEC opponent is Kentucky, which is aiming for its sixth straight NCAA tournament appearance. Staley has already confirmed that the Gamecocks will play Ole Miss and Texas A&M in its other two home-and home SEC series this year.

This story was originally published August 12, 2015 at 1:31 PM with the headline "Ohio State, Duke, UConn highlight USC women’s schedule."