Five things to know about both South Carolina men's, women's basketball on opening night
With both South Carolina men’s and women’s basketball tipping off their seasons tonight, here are a few things to know about both teams as they head into the 2024-25 slate.
South Carolina Men’s Basketball:
1 – Lamont Paris and the men’s team will look to reach the NCAA Tournament for a second straight year, a feat that hasn’t happened for this program since they did so in 1997 and 1998.
2 – While the Gamecocks don’t begin the year ranked, that’s something that they’re used to. The last time USC started a season ranked was ahead of the 1997-98 season (No.7). In 117 seasons of South Carolina basketball, the program has only begun a season ranked six times.
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3 – Last season, South Carolina tied a program record by winning 26 games. Since joining the SEC in 1991, the Gamecocks have won 20 or more games, overall, ten times. When the team dropped less than ten games the previous season, they’ve gone on to win 20 or more games the previous season two out of three times.
4 – South Carolina’s roster features 50 percent of last year’s roster. Of the seven new additions, three are true freshmen.
5 – Including his time at Chattanooga, Paris has never finished with a worse conference record than what he finished the previous year at the same school. The Gamecocks finished tied for second last season in the SEC.
South Carolina Women’s Basketball:
1 – Dawn Staley and the Gamecocks will look to become the first team to repeat since UConn won four straight from 2013-16.
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2 – Staley heads into this season having been named SEC Coach of the Year seven times. If she’s able to win the award again this year, she will tie the late Pat Summit who has won the award more than any coach in SEC history with eight.
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3 – This is the fifth straight time that South Carolina will begin a season ranked No.1. Those four other seasons resulted in the following:
2021 – Loss in Final Four
2022 – National Championship
2023 – Loss in Final Four
2024 – National Championship
4 – Having reached the Final Four the past four years, USC has reached the Sweet 16 in 11 of the past 12 tournaments.
5 – The Gamecocks will seek to become the first program in SEC history to win three straight SEC regular season championships and tournament championships multiple times. The Gamecocks first achieved this feat from 2015-17. Tennessee is the only other SEC program that has done this (1998-2000).
