No. 2 South Carolina off and running with win over Grand Canyon. What we learned
Dawn Staley and the South Carolina women’s basketball team started their 2025-26 season off with a comfortable win on Monday night.
The No. 2 Gamecocks (1-0) beat Grand Canyon 94-54 at home in Colonial Life Arena.
South Carolina put together a well-rounded performance, led by a 20-point showing from Florida State transfer Ta’Niya Latson. Tessa Johnson was right behind her with 19 points of her own. Raven Johnson flirted with a triple-double. She finished with 11 points, eight rebounds and seven assists.
Staley gets a win over her former assistant
Winston Gandy’s night started with receiving a ring for his efforts as an assistant at South Carolina last season. But the night ended with a loss in his first-ever game as a head coach at Grand Canyon.
Gandy was an assistant at South Carolina for two seasons, winning a national title with the Gamecocks in 2024 and advancing to the Final Four last year. He won two SEC Tournament titles during his time in Columbia.
Grand Canyon put up a valiant effort during Gandy’s first game but was ultimately outmatched. The Antelopes were led by Ale’Jah Douglas’s team-high 16 points.
“Winston has done a great job with only having two or three players left on that roster [from last year],” Staley said. “Him recruiting and getting the talent that he got — and for him to come in here and play us, maybe he thought it was probably going to be closer. Maybe he thought he could win. And that’s the type of attitude you need to bring in a place like this.”
Gamecocks look good from long range
South Carolina showed no fear shooting the ball from beyond the arc in the game.
The Gamecocks were 9 for 16 from 3-point range in the first half. Both Tessa Johnson and Raven Johnson made three 3s in the first half. In total, five Gamecocks made a 3-pointer in the game.
“That was the goal,” Latson said of the 3s. “We wanted to get a lot of 3s, especially the guards. Coming out, we had to shoot them, especially good open shots. We just had to create for each other.”
South Carolina finished 9 for 19 (47.4%) on 3-pointers in the game. For context, South Carolina finished 4 for 18 from 3-point range in both of its exhibitions.
More flexibility in the rotation
Some minor foul trouble in South Carolina’s exhibition game against North Carolina last week led to some flexing in the Gamecocks’ rotation. USC, which only has 10 healthy players available on its roster, found itself dealing with some foul trouble again against Grand Canyon, but to a bit of a higher degree.
Star forward Joyce Edwards had three personal fouls in her first 11 minutes of action against the Antelopes. It didn’t help when freshman Agot Makeer and transfer center Madina Okot each found themselves with three fouls at one point.
Staley broke out a four-guard lineup just before the first half that put Okot with Raven Johnson, Latson, Tessa Johnson and Makeer . Staley went back to the four-guard lineup, albeit with different combinations of players, a few different times in the course of the game.
The rotation was met with more adversity when guard Maddy McDaniel went down with an injury in the third quarter. This forced Makeer and fellow freshman Ayla McDowell to play more minutes in the fourth quarter. Staley didn’t provide details on McDaniel’s injury but said she wasn’t “too worried.”
Staley described the four-guard lineup as “OK” when asked to evaluate it. She praised McDowell, who finished with nine points, two rebounds and a steal.
“Haven’t done it in practice,” Staley said. “We just did it because we needed a better matchup and we were in foul trouble. ... I thought Ayla did a really good job at just continuing to fight, just continuing to play, giving multiple efforts defensively and on the boards. Some people need to take a page out of her book, because if we can play like that, it’ll clean up some of the mishaps that we have out there.”
Tessa Johnson led the team with 33 minutes in the game. Makeer and McDowell led the bench unit with 19 and 17 minutes, respectively.
South Carolina’s next four games
- Friday: vs Bowling Green, 7 p.m. (SEC Network Plus)
- Tuesday, Nov. 11: vs Clemson, 6 p.m. (ESPN2)
- Saturday, Nov. 15: vs Southern Cal in The Real SC in Los Angeles 9 p.m. (FOX)
- Wednesday, Nov. 19: vs Winthrop, 7 p.m. (SEC Network Plus)
This story was originally published November 3, 2025 at 9:06 PM.
