An early look at the best games on South Carolina WBB’s 2025-26 schedule
South Carolina women’s basketball released its long-awaited full 2025-26 schedule on Friday.
The Gamecocks, who are coming off a 34-5 year that finished with a loss in the national title game, open their season Nov. 3 at home against Grand Canyon.
The season is still months away, but let’s take an early look at some of the best games on South Carolina’s schedule and analyze how this slate compares to previous years.
Staley battles with former assistants
- Nov. 3 vs. Grand Canyon
- Nov. 7 vs. Bowling Green State
South Carolina will open its 2025-26 season against two of Staley’s former assistant coaches.
The Gamecocks will host Grand Canyon to open the season on Nov. 3. Grand Canyon is led by Winston Gandy, who was with the Gamecocks for two seasons before taking the new job in April.
A few days after that, South Carolina will host Bowling Green State. The Falcons are led by former longtime Gamecock assistant Fred Chmiel, who is in his third year with Bowling Green. Chmiel was at South Carolina from 2015 to 2023.
Best non-conference games
- Nov. 15 vs. Southern Cal
- Nov. 26 vs. Duke
- Nov. 27 vs. UCLA or Texas
- Dec. 4 at Louisville
Unfortunately, the game between South Carolina and Southern Cal — deemed the fight for “The Real SC” — has lost some of the luster it had when it was originally announced. The game was billed as a top-tier matchup between two powerhouses led stars Juju Watkins and MiLaysia Fulwiley. Unfortunately, Watkins tore her ACL during the NCAA Tournament and won’t be playing in the game, and Fulwiley transferred to LSU.
Just because the two stars are gone doesn’t mean the game won’t be good. It’ll still be an early-season Top 25 matchup filled with good basketball in a packed NBA arena.
Staley always finds a way to put South Carolina in a solid neutral-site game or event and she outdid herself by getting the Gamecocks invited into the Players Era Championship. South Carolina will play two title contenders on back-to-back days. The Gamecocks will be challenged with an Elite Eight rematch against Duke and then either a Final Four rematch with Texas or a rematch with UCLA (also a Final Four team), who beat South Carolina in the regular season last year.
South Carolina drew Louisville in this year’s ACC-SEC Challenge. This game might not get as much shine as the Gamecocks’ other non-conference games, but it will probably be a great Top 25 matchup.
The Gamecocks will hit the road to play Louisville for just the third time in program history. The Gamecocks lead the series 2-0 and the last matchup came in the 2022 Final Four, where South Carolina won. Louisville made the NCAA Tournament for the 14th time in the last 15 years last season — it would’ve been the 15th time if COVID hadn’t cancelled the tournament in 2020. The Cardinals have been a mainstay of women’s college basketball since the early ‘90s.
Notable SEC games
- Jan. 15 vs. Texas
- Feb. 8 vs. Tennessee
- Feb. 15 at LSU
South Carolina and Texas played each other four times last season — twice in the regular season, once in the SEC Tournament and once in the NCAA Tournament.
And guess what? It could happen again.
The Gamecocks could play Texas in the Players Era Championship in Las Vegas, then they’d match up in Columbia in January and for all we know they could run into each other twice in the postseason again.
We won’t get that far ahead of ourselves, though. The game in January will be a big home test. It’s South Carolina’s second SEC home game and comes after a bit of a lull in the schedule where the Gamecocks play Florida, Arkansas and Georgia. South Carolina beat those three teams by an average of 36.6 points last year.
Tennessee gave South Carolina a run for its money in Knoxville last year and made a push into the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament. February’s matchup in Colonial Life Arena will be a solid test for the Gamecocks and arguably the most exciting SEC home game after the Texas game.
South Carolina’s most highly anticipated SEC game of the year comes at LSU a week after the Gamecocks’ matchup with Tennessee. The game has become a must-watch rivalry in the last four years since Kim Mulkey was hired at LSU, although South Carolina holds a 17-game win streak over LSU.
This year’s matchup has some extra flair after Fulwiley transferred to LSU back in April. The Gamecocks have four more SEC games after their trip to Baton Rouge, but there’s also a solid chance SEC Tournament seeding implications come with this game.
How does this year compare to the past?
Notably absent from South Carolina’s 2025-26 schedule is a matchup with UConn. It’s the first time in 11 seasons the two teams won’t meet in the regular season.
Initially, the lack of UConn on the schedule seemed to be the sign of a change in tune in how Staley built her schedule with the Gamecocks. After South Carolina missed out on the No. 1 overall seed in the 2025 NCAA Tournament in March, Staley went as far as to say she might consider changing how she builds future schedules as a result of the snub:
“I’d like to get some feedback on how they came to that conclusion. Because we put together, we manufactured a schedule that, if done right, it should produce the overall No. 1 seed.
“But I will say this: We’re going to make adjustments to our schedule in the future if the standard is the standard. If that’s the standard, then we can play any schedule and get a No. 1 seed.”
Now that the full 2025-26 slate is out, though, things appear to have only gotten marginally easier for South Carolina in the non-conference part of its schedule.
The Gamecocks will play at least seven non-conference teams that are coming off an NCAA Tournament berth last year. All but one of those games will be played on the road or in a neutral site. In the 2024-25 season, South Carolina played six non-conference teams coming off an NCAA Tournament berth the year before. All but two of those games were played on the road or in a neutral site.
The split between high-major and mid-major teams in South Carolina’s non-conference schedule saw some change, but not much.
The Gamecocks will play seven high-major teams and eight mid-major teams in 2025-26. This is the first time South Carolina will play more mid-major than high-major teams since the 2022-23 season. That being said, the split between high and mid-major opponents in the last three seasons varied from year to year. In 2024-25 it was 9/5, in 2023-24 it was 7/6 and in 2022-23 it was 5/8.
