South Carolina women's basketball advances to national championship game

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South Carolina advanced to the national championship game with a 72-59 win over Louisville in the semifinals. Aliyah Boston celebrated a week of awards with 23 points, 18 rebounds, and four assists. 

South Carolina opened the game on an 11-2 run and Louisville looked overmatched.  However, when South Carolina went to the bench in the second quarter, Louisville was able to regroup and take the lead on a 12-0 run. 

Boston ended the run with a layup, and as the game wore on, every time the Cardinals made a push, Boston answered for the Gamecocks. The game was tied at 24 at the media timeout, but the Gamecocks took the lead for good with a 6-0 spurt, and led 34-28 at halftime.

South Carolina led by as much as 15 in the third quarter, but Louisville had another surge, and Boston had another answer. An 8-1 run cut South Carolina’s lead to six with less than a minute to go. Boston converted a three-point play with four seconds left, drawing the fourth foul on Louisville’s Emily Engstler, who led the Cardinals in scoring, in the process. 

“It was really big just because it gave us momentum and it also got somebody else in foul trouble, which we could always benefit from,” Boston said.

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Engstler, who had 18 points and nine rebounds, would foul out midway through the fourth quarter. 

Louisville never got closer than nine the rest of the game. Boston put a bow on her game by hitting a three-pointer with 3:12 left, a basket that got South Carolina off 65 points, the losing score in the previous two semifinals. She had a double-double in the second half alone, with 15 points and 10 rebounds.

“the game just opened up. We were able to continue to move the ball and it opened up for me to get more scoring opportunities.

“We have to play through her. It doesn’t mean that she has to shoot the ball, but every time she touches the ball she draws a crowd,” said Dawn Staley. “I thought we just got in the rhythm of shooting outside shots that really didn’t make any sense (in the second quarter), and it just threw off our transitional defensive balance. But we corrected it, and when we started going into her, playing inside out, more shots from the outside started falling.”

Zia Cooke opened each half with a three-pointer and finished with ten points. Destanni Henderson had 11 points and shot 3-6 from three. 

Brea Beal drew the assignment of guarding Louisville’s Hailey Van Lith. Van Lith led Louisville in scoring during the season and set a program record by scoring at least 20 points in the first four tournament games. The 6-2 Beal had a size advantage on 5-7 Van Lith, and she established herself by blocking Van Lith’s first two shot attempts. She harassed Van Lith into four turnovers and held her to just four points in the first 37 minutes (Van Lith added five points in the last 2:56 after South Carolina began pulling starters). 

“It’s just a mentality to have every single game,” Beal said. “You can’t just turn it on and turn it off when you choose to. It’s something I’ve grown since a freshman. It’s a talent I’ve grown and added to as a freshman. Especially now you just have to lock in and know what your job is to do offensively and defensively.”

Beal also tied her season-high with 12 points and seemed to always find her way to the ball for layups. She took just one jumper, with the rest of her shots at the rim. After just one double-figure scoring game during the season, Beal has scored 12 in consecutive games.

“She’s calm, she’s seeing it a lot differently than she has in the past,” Staley said. “Sometimes when you get pigeonholed into being a defender, you just take on that role and then you don’t even look to score. You don’t even look to do anything else. But we got her comfortable. She helps so much when she scores and when she shoots the ball, and hopefully she’ll continue to do that for us.”

Notes:

Earlier Friday, Boston won the Ann Meyers Drysdale Award, the USBWA player of the year award. She was unable to accept the award because she was preparing for the game. … Boston broke the South Carolina single-season record for rebounds. She now has 446. Katrina Anderson had the former record with 434. … Louisville held its own on the glass and South Carolina was only plus-three. … South Carolina held Louisville to 20.0% shooting in the fourth quarter. … South Carolina played 11 players in the first half. Senior Elysa Wesolek got in the game for the final 1:05. She grabbed a rebound. … Louisville was just 1-8 from three and 4-7 from the line. South Carolina was 6-17 from three and 12-17 from the line. … South Carolina’s next game is Sunday at 8:00 pm eastern against the winner of Stanford-UConn.