South Carolina women's basketball: Five Things to Watch - Charleston Southern.

South Carolina hosts Charleston Southern for a Thursday matinee. Here’s what to watch for and how to watch.

1. Tidings of comfort and joy
After Thursday’s game, South Carolina does not play again for 10 days. You want to go into that break feeling good about your play. 

There is only one more tune-up game before the SEC gauntlet. Conference play isn’t forgiving, and nobody will care that South Carolina is a young team that still has to find its footing sometimes.

At the very least, you don’t want to face Dawn Staley the Grinch when you come back from break.

“You threaten them,” Staley said, laughing. “I did.”

“I understand the play on the mind to be in two places and want to get home and you can’t fight that,” she continued. “It has to be your discipline. You have to be where your mind is.”

2. From now on our troubles will be miles away
The best way to get on Staley’s nice list is to play hard, focused basketball for 40 minutes. South Carolina had lapses against USF, particularly a naughty sequence late in the fourth quarter that caused an irate Staley to call a timeout.

“Our standard is our standard,” Staley said. “We have been harping on playing to our standard. Let’s play disciplined basketball. Let’s build.”

The Gamecocks struggled with similar lapses early in the season, culminating with the loss at UCLA. They had seemingly corrected the issue in the four games since then before it reared its head again.

If you think back to the 2021-22 national championship team, the mantra all season was about the margin between winning and losing. That came after the missed layups in the Final Four that cost South Carolina against Stanford the year before.

The team understood how tiny the difference between winning and losing that game was, and was hyper-focused on not repeating that experience. Perhaps this year’s squad could learn from that message.

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3. Let’s have a cheer from everyone
Ahead of the USF game, I wrote about the value of the three remaining December games for the players at the end of South Carolina’s bench: Maryam Dauda, Adhel Tac, and Sakima Walker. 

Well, it didn’t happen on Sunday. 

Walker did not dress due to a lingering ankle injury. Dauda and Tac only played two minutes each because the Gamecocks failed to put the Bulls away until late.

South Florida is a much, much better team than Charleston Southern, so let’s say it again: Hopefully South Carolina takes care of business early so Dauda, Tac, and Walker can get some playing time.

4. Visions of sugar plums danced through their heads
It’s the “other” dunk. Everyone remembers Ashlyn Watkins’ dunks against Clemson, Kentucky, and TCU, but according to the official scorebook she also dunked against Charleston Southern two years ago. 

It was barely a dunk – if at all. She barely grazed the rim and the ball rattled around instead of going straight through.

Watkins gets another chance to throw down a more memorable against Charleston Southern this week. Will she do it?

5. Scouting the Bucs
Charleston Southern is no longer one of the worst programs in the country, but the Bucs are hardly a powerhouse. They are ranked 321 in the NET (out of 362). The last time these teams met, almost exactly two years ago, Charleston Southern was 356 out of 361.

Looking at some familiar opponents, Charleston Southern lost 83-53 to North Carolina, 81-56 to East Carolina, and 117-44 to LSU.

Catherine Alben leads the Bucs in scoring with 13.5 points, but she is shooting under 40% on the season. As a team, the Bucs shoot just 34.1% and 26.6% from three.

Charleston Southern is coming off a 78-50 win at SC State. In the win, Charleston Southern scored a season-high for points scored and shot a season-high 50% from the floor.

As part of the agreement that brought Charleston Southern to Columbia in 2022, South Carolina was supposed to play a return game in Charleston. Instead, South Carolina paid to convert that to another home game and Thursday’s game fulfills the contract.

The Ws
Who: #2 South Carolina (10-1) vs Charleston Southern (4-8)
When: Noon, Thursday, December 19
Where: Colonial Life Arena, Columbia, SC
Watch: SEC Network+

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