South Carolina women's basketball: Five Things to Watch - #8 Duke

South Carolina finally returns home for a late-night top-ten showdown against Duke. Find out what to watch for and how to watch.

1. Keep it going
In the two games in Fort Myers over the Thanksgiving weekend, South Carolina seemingly corrected the issues that cost them the game at UCLA. That probably wasn’t a surprise to most people.

Now, the Gamecocks have to maintain that same level of focus and energy. 

“We just need to follow it up and continue to play that way,” Dawn Staley said. “Our luck is we get a top-10 team in the country on our court in the late game, and we got to be ready to go.”

Staley thought they were focused going into the UCLA game too, but once the game started that quickly turned out to be false. We may not know until sometime after 9 pm tonight.

2. Run Run Run
We mostly talked about South Carolina’s defense in Fort Myers, but we probably should have talked more about how South Carolina turned defense into offense. 

The Gamecocks had 21 fast break points and 30 points off 19 turnovers against Iowa State. Against Purdue it was 28 fast break points and 32 points off 20 turnovers.

There is definitely a trend there. South Carolina’s best game prior to the Florida trip was a 95-44 win against East Carolina. In that game, South Carolina had 33 fast break points and 40 points off 27 turnovers.

In the other five games, the Gamecocks averaged just 7.8 fast break points and 15.0 points off 16.6 turnovers. So the defense was still forcing turnovers, the Gamecocks just weren’t converting them into easy points.

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3. Strength of Schedule
Duke is the first of two top-ten opponents this weekend, with no. 9 TCU on deck Sunday. Including these two games, four of South Carolina’s first 10 games are against opponents ranked in the top ten at the time of the game, with a fifth against a preseason top-ten team ranked no. 15 when they played. 

Additionally, although Michigan was unranked when they played, the Wolverines are now ranked no. 23.

That strength of schedule is why South Carolina, despite having a loss, topped the NCAA’s NET rankings when they were released on Monday. Not many coaches schedule this aggressively – and Staley has said she wished the schedule hadn’t ended up exactly as it did –  but Staley likes the repeated challenges.

“I like the fact that there’s no letup,” she said. “We can’t have any let-ups. I like the fact that it’s a focused opponent where we got to out-execute them.“

4. Teddy Bear Toss and pajama party
South Carolina hosts its annual teddy bear toss on Thursday (fun fact: Dule was the opponent for the first teddy bear toss in 2019). Fans are asked to bring a teddy bear (no battery packs or boxes) to throw onto the court at halftime. This year, South Carolina is adding a blanket drive. Fans can bring a new blanket to donate at the door. 

With the late tipoff, the Gamecocks have made the game a pajama party, and fans are asked to wear their finest jammies.

In case you were wondering, yes Louis Vuitton does make PJs.

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5. Scouting the Blue Devils
There’s still a lot of season left to go, but so far this looks like the best team of Kara Lawson’s tenure at Duke.

Under Lawson, the Blue Devils have always played tough defense, but they have rarely had the offensive firepower to match. This might be the year when that changes.

Duke is averaging 83.2 points and shooting 48.3% from the floor, plus 38.9% from three. Last season it was 68.2 points, 44.3%, and 31.7% from three.

“They can put some points on the scoreboard, so we got to defend,” Staley said. “And then, for us, we’ve got to score. I think, for us, we have to be disciplined. They like to get up and down the floor. They shoot a lot of threes. We have to be disciplined in taking good shots because, when we take good shots, it affords us to rebound the basketball, and it affords us to get back in transition D (defense) to make sure that we’re guarding their shooters and their rim runners.”

However, against the better teams it has faced this season, Duke hasn’t been as impressive. It shot just 41.1% in its lone loss at Maryland. The percentage was also low in close wins at South Dakota State (42.9%) and Kansas State (43.5%). It’s not all bad though – Duke shot a whopping 56.3% against Oklahoma.

“We just really focus on the possessions,” Lawson said. “We don’t focus on the big picture part of the game too much. Our goal is to have as many good possessions as we can, and they’re a really good team. I mean, we could have good possessions down there, and they could still score. We could have a good possession down there, and if we’re on offense, we might not score. I think you just have to focus on the details of what you’re trying to do, versus, ‘are we down? are we up? None of that really matters until the fourth quarter, if it’s a possession game, right?”

The Ws
Who: #3 South Carolina (7-1) vs #8 Duke (8-1)
When: 9:00 pm, Thursday, December 5
Where: Colonial Life Arena, Columbia, SC
Watch: ESPN

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