What to watch for in No. 2 South Carolina WBB’s SEC road game vs. No. 16 Oklahoma
South Carolina women’s basketball is hitting the road for an SEC matchup Thursday.
Dawn Staley and the No. 2 Gamecocks are scheduled for a Top 25 matchup with No. 16 Oklahoma.
The Sooners (14-4, 2-3 SEC) were ranked as high as No. 5 in the country just two weeks ago but have fallen in the Associated Press Top 25 poll after three straight losses to ranked opponents in Ole Miss, Kentucky and LSU.
“Whether they won five straight, three straight lost, it’s a dangerous game,” Staley said Wednesday. “We don’t think, going in, just because they lost three, that it’s an automatic [win] for us. We know this league, we know this league, and we know the strength of it. We know the weaknesses of it, which there aren’t very many of them. So to go the road, to win, it’s a hard feat no matter who you’re playing. We don’t take Oklahoma lightly.”
South Carolina comes into the game 19-1 with a 5-0 mark in SEC play. The Gamecocks recorded wins over then-No. 4 Texas and Coppin State last week to bring their win streak to 12 games.
ESPN Analytics gives South Carolina a 77.9% chance to beat Oklahoma, while analytics site BartTorvik.com has the Gamecocks as a nine-point favorite with an 80% chance of winning.
Series snapshot
Oklahoma holds a 3-2 advantage over South Carolina in the all-time series.
The first meeting between the two teams came in 2006. Oklahoma won that game in Columbia and two more matchups in 2007 and 2009 to get out to a 3-0 lead in the series. The two teams wouldn’t play again for over 15 years.
South Carolina has won the last two matchups in the series by an average of 29.5 points. The Gamecocks shellacked Oklahoma 101-60 at home last year during the regular season and beat the Sooners again in the SEC Tournament 93-75.
This will be South Carolina’s first game at Oklahoma since 2007. The Gamecocks lost that game 95-63.
Stopping Oklahoma’s stars
Oklahoma has a pair of stars that could give South Carolina issues Thursday night.
Freshman guard Aaliyah Chavez has found herself in national award conversations with her play during her rookie campaign. The No. 3 recruit from the 2025 recruiting class is leading the Sooners with 18.8 points per game and is second in assists with 3.1 per game.
Chavez is the definition of a high-volume shooter. She’s averaging 17.2 field goal attempts per game but is making just 39% of her shots. Chavez isn’t scared to shoot 3-pointers either. She’s averaging 8.6 attempts per game and making just 33.8% of those shots.
“People who like her, who are scorers, they’re going to get shots off, they’re going to hit shots,” South Carolina forward Joyce Edwards said Wednesday. “We just, again, [have to] disrupt her. I feel like we have a game plan, and we can execute to minimize her scoring game.”
Senior forward Raegan Beers is another formidable opponent for the Gamecocks.
Beers is averaging a double-double with 16.7 points per game and an SEC-high 11.2 rebounds per game. She’s had mixed results in the three games she’s played against South Carolina in her career.
When she was still at Oregon State, she scored 16 points in a loss to South Carolina during the 2024 NCAA Tournament. Last year, she had 23 points in Oklahoma’s 41-point loss to the Gamecocks.
South Carolina kept Beers nearly completely under wraps in the SEC Tournament last year. Beers scored just seven points and was 2 for 10 on field goals in the game. South Carolina’s Maryam Dauda played a crucial role off the bench in limiting Beers’ productivity during the postseason last year. Staley hopes Dauda, along with the rest of her forwards, will have a similar impact on Thursday.
“We got five of them, five of them will play at some point. At some point five of them will be needed,” Staley said Wednesday. “Beers is a handful that we got to just show her different looks, and we got five different looks to throw at her.”
Free throw improvement needed
There’s plenty to be happy about through the first 20 games of South Carolina’s season.
The Gamecocks’ offense is among the best in the country with 88.7 points per game (No. 5 nationally) and its defense is doing even better by holding opponents to just a 32.4 field goal percentage (No. 3 nationally).
But there’s always room for improvement. Most notably, South Carolina has struggled from the charity stripe this year.
The Gamecocks are currently ranked No. 231 in the country with a free-throw percentage of 69.1 this season. The stats will show South Carolina has struggled in the last decade-plus from the free throw line. Since the 2012-13 season, the Gamecocks have made more than 70% of their free throws just four times.
This season’s struggles are concerning because they come after improvement at the line last year. South Carolina shot 76% from the free throw line in the 2024-25 season. That was the highest since the Gamecocks shot 73% as a team in the 2018-19 season.
Staley admitted on Wednesday that her team is in a free throw rut. It’s something she said the Gamecocks are working to get out of, as she knows the importance a few points can mean in the thick of SEC play.
“I think just as much as you get in the rut, you can get yourself out of it,” Staley said. “You got to make them. Got to make them to get out of it. I know they’re not intentionally missing them, but it’s a rut that we’ll try to fight to get out. Because we don’t want to lose a basketball game depending on having to make free throws.”
How to watch South Carolina vs Oklahoma
- Who: No. 2 South Carolina (19-1, 5-0 SEC) vs No. 16 Oklahoma (14-4, 2-3 SEC)
- Where: Lloyd Noble Center in Norman, Oklahoma
- When: Thursday, Jan. 22 at 7:30 p.m.
- TV: ESPN (Ryan Ruocco, Andraya Carter, Holly Rowe)
- Stream: ESPN app or ESPN.com
- Radio: 107.5 FM (Brad Muller) or Sirius XM Channel 81.
