South Carolina-NC State: Renewing an old rivalry defined by high-level competition and legendary coaches

Alan Piercy is the author of A Gamecock Odyssey: University of South Carolina Sports in the Independent Era (1971-1991). The following was originally published on Alan’s South By Southeast newsletter.

They never met in an Atlantic Coast Conference contest. South Carolina was four years removed from ACC membership when women’s basketball moved to varsity status for the 1974-75 season. But the Gamecocks and Wolfpack have forged a memorable rivalry across 32 games since their first meeting in December of 1977. 

NC State holds a 20-12 advantage in the series, though the Gamecocks have won four of six in the Dawn Staley era. 

The series has seen high-level competition, with the Wolfpack ranked in 23 of those contests, the Gamecocks ranked in 11, and the programs simultaneously ranked in those same 11 games. 

The series has seen legendary players and coaches throughout. NC State’s Kay Yow, one of the luminaries of the women’s game, became Wolfpack basketball’s first full-time women’s coach in 1975. She went on to lead the program over 34 seasons, compiling 680 wins, 13 Sweet Sixteen appearances, and a Final Four run in 1998.

Yow courageously battled breast cancer for years, ultimately succumbing to the disease in January 2009. The Wolfpack now play their home games on a floor named in her honor at Raleigh’s Reynolds Coliseum. 

South Carolina’s firebrand Pam Parsons elevated the nascent Gamecock program to national prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s, winning a WNIT championship in 1979 and reaching the Final Four in 1980.

(Until the 1981-82 season, women’s collegiate sports were governed by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. The NCAA ultimately wrested control of women’s sports away from the AIAW, and the first women’s NCAA Tournament occurred in 1982.)

Parsons led the Gamecock program to its first-ever regular-season victory versus a ranked team, a 79-66 win over the No. 7-ranked Wolfpack at Carolina Coliseum on Feb. 17, 1979. Following that contest, the Gamecocks and Wolfpack played six consecutive games with both teams ranked, including four consecutive top-10 matchups between 1980 and 1982. The Gamecocks won all six of those games under Parsons and her successor, Terry Kelly.

[Get Complete South Carolina WBB postseason coverage from veteran reporter Chris Wellbaum and analyst Markeshia Grant! Join GC now and get your first month for $1 or use the code FAMS to get 40% off the first year!]

Since 2013, Wes Moore, a Dallas, Texas, native and one-time Francis Marion head coach, has led the Wolfpack to three Sweet Sixteen finishes, an Elite Eight (2022), and now the Wolfpack’s second-ever Final Four over a highly successful 11-year run. 

Moore’s counterpart in Columbia, the Gamecocks’ incomparable Dawn Staley, has done just about all there is to do in the women’s game as a player and coach. She inherited a Gamecock program that could boast just two winning SEC ledgers over 18 years in the league before her arrival. Over her 16 seasons, Staley has elevated the Gamecocks into the premier program in all of college basketball, winning over 80 percent of her games along the way. 

Staley’s Gamecocks have captured eight SEC regular-season and eight SEC tournament championships. They enter their sixth (and fourth-consecutive) Final Four, having captured two previous national championships (2017 and 2022). Over the last three seasons, the Gamecocks are an astounding 107-3. 

South Carolina is famously undefeated at Colonial Life Arena since a statue of program great A’ja Wilson was unveiled in January 2021, and holds an SEC-record 43 consecutive SEC home wins since that time. The last team to defeat South Carolina in Columbia? The eighth-ranked Wolfpack, who handed the top-ranked Gamecocks a 54-46 defeat on Dec. 3, 2021. 

Adding additional interest to this already intriguing matchup, former Gamecock Sonia Rivers is now a highly acclaimed junior guard for the Wolfpack. Rivers, a Wilmington, North Carolina, native, was a freshman member of the Gamecocks’ 2022 national championship team before returning to her home state to help lead the Wolfpack to this season’s Final Four. 

The Gamecocks and the Wolfpack will meet again this Friday in Cleveland, Ohio. One team is unvanquished at 36-0 and the standard-bearer of the women’s game, while the other squad is riding a wave of momentum and good feelings compounded by NC State’s insurgent run into the men’s Final Four. 

It has been perhaps the premier out-of-conference rivalry for both programs since 1977. I suspect this, the highest-profile contest yet will live up to the rivalry’s rich history. 

In adding that chapter, either the Gamecocks or Wolfpack will punch their ticket to the national championship game on April 7.

Discuss South Carolina women’s basketball on The Insiders Forum!