South Carolina women's basketball advances to the Elite Eight

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South Carolina rode a dominant defensive effort to a 59-43 win over UCLA to advance to the Elite Eight for the third season in a row.

UCLA’s Cori Close thought the Bruins needed to do three things Saturday: avoid getting dominated on the glass, keep South Carolina out of transition, and have UCLA’s bench negate South Carolina’s depth. 

She got one out of three. 

UCLA held South Carolina to just five fast break points, and made the Gamecocks work for every basket.

But South Carolina got UCLA in early foul trouble, which disrupted the Bruins rotation. UCLA got just 13 points from its bench, and had just nine late in the fourth quarter before both teams emptied their benches. 

That was less than Kamilla Cardoso or Bree Hall had individually (10 points each), as South Carolina finished with 28 points off the bench. 

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South Carolina controlled the glass from the start, and nearly doubled up UCLA for much of the day before UCLA outrebounded South Carolina by five in the fourth quarter to close the gap. The Gamecocks finished plus-eight rebounding and had 10 second-chance points on 15 offensive rebounds. 

Aliyah Boston had eight points, 14 rebounds, two assists, two blocks to pace South Carolina. UCLA sagged on Boston and double- and triple-teamed her, just like in the first game

South Carolina adjusted in the third quarter and ran the offense through Boston at the elbow. She was able to find the holes in the defense and the Gamecocks scored almost half of their points (25) in the third quarter.

“It was just coach trying to see if anything else would open up,” Boston said. “It allowed us to see if the high-low was available, whether it be the skip pass or attack from the high post. We were able to start picking them apart slowly and surely.”

Brea Beal joined Hall and Cardoso in double figures with 10 points, but it was South Carolina’s defensive effort that carried the Gamecocks.

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“I don’t think it was perfect but it was really, really good,” Boston said.

“We had a chance to look at them and feel them and see where they want to get some shots (in the first game),” Dawn Staley said. “We just tried to disrupt, try to make them catch it a little bit further out, have a little bit better rotation, call the switches a lot earlier, and just decrease the amount of times that they got wide-open looks.”

South Carolina held UCLA to a season-low 43 points, 29.4% shooting, and 3-18 from three. It was UCLA’s lowest scoring output in nine years. The Gamecocks forced 15 turnovers and blocked six shots. 

“I really think their physicality, them guarding us and blowing up the screens, something we haven’t played in a while, and I don’t think we responded quick enough to it and figured it out quick enough,” Camryn Brown said. “I think credit to them, their physicality on defense I think really bothered us because we couldn’t get into a flow of how we really wanted to run our offense.”

Beal was the primary defender on Charisma Osborne, who was coming off a career-high 36 points against Oklahoma. She had help from her teammates, including Hall, and they held Osborne to 14 points on 4-12 shooting with five turnovers.

“We’re a very defensively minded team,” Beal said. “We definitely do a lot of work in practice, whether it’s ball screen, whatever the case may be. I think for games like this when offensive scoring is very low, we definitely rely on our defense to keep their scoring lower than ours.”

Cooke defended Kiki Rice, again with help from Hall, and had RIce completely locked down. Rice finished with three points on 1-5 shooting. Cooke was extremely proud of her effort, and beamed when asked if Rice was her assignment.

“Yes. Yes it was,” she said. “I was just trying to do my job and limit her to as many points as I could.”

Notes:

Beal also had seven rebounds and four assists. … South Carolina will play at UCLA during the 2024-25 season. … Aliyah Boston braids report: Boston wore her tournament garnet braids. … Dawn Staley fit report: Staley wore a Richfresh black track suit with gray and white stripes. … Announced attendance for the session was 12,879. … South Carolina advances to the Elite Eight where it will play Maryland Monday at 7.

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