South Carolina women's basketball: After LSU win, again it's the Gamecocks and everybody else

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About 30 minutes before #1 South Carolina’s showdown with #9 LSU on Thursday night, Dawn Staley appeared on ESPN’s College GameDay. The pregame show was broadcast live from the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, essentially an hour-long promo for the two programs. The sports world’s spotlight was focused on the last two national champions. 

“Win, lose, or draw, (women’s basketball is) winning tonight,” Staley said.

After the Gamecocks’ 76-70 win, make it two wins. Or the 15 straight wins over LSU. Or South Carolina’s 28-game road winning streak. Or 37 straight SEC wins. Or 50 straight home wins. 

However you measure it, it’s South Carolina and everybody else. That’s how Kim Mulkey summed up the situation about a year ago when South Carolina routed LSU in Columbia. 

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Then LSU got the last laugh by winning the national championship, and the Tigers entered the season ranked no. 1. But South Carolina keeps on winning. Is it still the Gamecocks and everyone else?

“I don’t really look at it that way,” Mulkey said before Thursday’s game. “I look at it as South Carolina has not been beaten. South Carolina is as good as they were last year (but) with new players. No one seems to have found the formula to beat them.”

The South Carolina-LSU game wasn’t the highest-ranked game of the season, or even the week. #2 UCLA and #3 Colorado played on Monday, and the Pac-12 is producing top-ten matchups seemingly every week.

But those games don’t bring the same wattage. South Carolina and LSU have players that even non-basketball fans know, whether it’s Angel Reese, Flau’jae Johnson, MiLaysia Fulwiley, or Ashlyn Watkins. This was the game on ESPN with a live pregame show.

“This was a win for all of us,” said Mulkey. “It was a win for everybody that got to witness this tonight.”

“We’re going to talk about this for years,” Staley said, before she reconsidered. “I hope we don’t because they will be replaced by other experiences and this is normal.”

On the court, South Carolina cemented itself as the title favorite. The Gamecocks were already the oddsmakers’ favorite, and they led the SEC. But now they have a commanding lead in the conference standings and have answered any doubts about how the inexperienced team would handle a pressure-packed situation.

Both coaches agreed South Carolina was the tougher team in the second half, and Staley preached the importance of playing hard for 40 minutes regardless of the score. Nobody loads up on talent and skips the rebuild like South Carolina

Earlier this week I wrote about the culture at South Carolina and how ownership of the program is passed from older players to younger players. It couldn’t been better illustrated than it was Thursday night. Former player Aliyah Boston made her way to the bench during a fourth-quarter timeout. 

Boston offered a few words of encouragement to Bree Hall, who went out and hit a pair of go-ahead threes.

“I’ve got to give it up to Aliyah Boston today,” Staley said. “She said something to Breezy during the timeout that really relaxed her, settled her down to be able to see the ball come at her, and it’s a practice shot. It’s what she does every single day that we’re out on the court.”

Now in her junior season, Hall is one of the veterans on the team despite being a bit player the last two years. She waited her turn, just like fellow junior Sania Feagin or Chloe Kitts, the sophomore who enrolled early last season because she knew it would make her better, even if she barely played.

“We kind of do it the hard way,” Staley said. “Our players are ones that trust us even when they don’t play a whole lot. They do trust the process. We saw Sania Feagin, who sat on the bench for two years. She’s a junior. Now she’s starting to play a little bit more. That doesn’t happen very often. They’re out of there. She’s talented. She could go somewhere and start and play plenty of minutes, but she chose to stick it out with us.”

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Mulkey was asked after the game if she thought the narrow loss meant LSU had closed the gap between South Carolina and everyone else. She didn’t take the bait.

“You’re setting me up because then you have all those South Carolina people jumping on me. That was a good basketball game,” she said. But later she seemed to suggest the gap is still there. “I think we’re one of the top teams in the country losing to South Carolina the way we did. It sends a message that we’re not going away.”

South Carolina will be heavy favorites for the rest of the season. The schedule is back-loaded with home games as seven of the final 11 games are in Columbia. Currently, UConn is the only ranked team remaining. The SEC Tournament is once again up the road in Greenville. Suddenly another undefeated season looks possible, if not probable.

Now the pressure really starts. Anything less than a national championship would be a second consecutive disappointment. Nobody knows better than the Gamecocks that the regular season isn’t what matters. It don’t mean a thing without the ring.

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