South Carolina women's basketball: Five Things to Watch - Indiana

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1. Paint production
As usual, South Carolina has a bigger front line than its opponent. But in this case, Indiana has a particularly small front court. 

The Hoosiers don’t have a player taller than 6-3, while the Gamecocks have three players listed as 6-3 or taller (plus at least two more who aren’t listed as that tall but probably are).

South Carolina is third in the nation in rebounding margin at plus-12.5 per game. Indiana is just 89th at plus-3.5.

Mackenzie Holmes is a very good scorer inside, but she isn’t a traditional post like Kamilla Cardoso or Ashlyn Watkins. As always, South Carolina will try to slow Holmes in part by making her work on defense. 

“It’s not just (Cardoso),” Teri Moren said. “They’re loaded with talent. But I think you try to crowd her. You’re not going to keep her from scoring. She’s too talented for that, and this is too good of a basketball team. They intentionally find ways to get her the ball.”

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2. Loose but focused
Some of the national media that hasn’t been around the Gamecocks much this season seemed surprised by how loose South Carolina was at practice. It was actually just a normal day with the Gamecocks, right down to Tessa Johnson asking during warmups, “Why are we Albany?”

And as always, they flipped the switch when practice started, even if they didn’t quite make it the full hour.

“I’m real thankful the NCAA only gave us 60 minutes because I couldn’t take any more than 60 minutes,” Dawn Staley said.

Although Staley has mostly resigned herself to the “daycare” atmosphere, she said she did have to limit the chatter at one point.

“We had to do media for the first round, and I did hear our players talk about some stuff I’ve never heard them talk about that’s in the future, and I’m like, no, we have to talk about Presbyterian,” Staley said. “That is the only team that matters at this point. Like right now Indiana is the only team that matters at this point because the margin of victory is so small at this stage of the game.”

Chloe Kitts said last week that the biggest thing she learned as a freshman last season was to not look ahead. I asked her about Staley’s comments, and she confirmed that all of the players were looking ahead, counting down the number of games to the championship.

Staley didn’t yell at them, Kitts, said, but she gave them a stern lesson. 

“More of a settle down. She wasn’t angry, because we’re kids, we’re hoopers,” Kitts said. “She was just super, super serious and we all took it and now we’re just worried about one game.” 

3. Three-point matchup
South Carolina is second in the nation at 39.75% in three-point shooting percentage. Indiana is 180th in the nation in three-point percentage defense at 30.8% That is a bad combination for the Hoosiers.

Indiana is going to have to make a difficult decision whether to double Cardoso and company in the paint and hope the Gamecock shooters miss, or stay home and hope the post players don’t dominate.

“We know everybody expects South Carolina to win,” said Chloe Moore-McNeil. “They’re a great team, and obviously they’re undefeated. But it’s March Madness, so you kind of have to throw all those things out of the window and just focus on yourself and winning.”

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4. It was long ago and it was far away
The Gamecocks and Hoosiers don’t have much history, but there was one very important game a few years ago.

In November of 2019, Indiana beat South Carolina 71-57 in the Paradise Jam Tournament in the Virgin Islands. In her homecoming, Aliyah Boston got in early foul trouble and only had 10 points and two rebounds in 14 minutes. before fouling out. 

“They’ve always been a very, very good defensive team. What they’ve added is shooters. When we played them in ’19, I felt like we played really off the arc, tried to bottle up Boston as well as we could,” Moren said. “But then now you look at some of the other pieces she’s added, Fulwiley, who is just incredible, dynamic, up and down the floor fast, speed-wise, and Cardoso obviously is a little bit bigger than Boston was. But she’s just added some shooters which has made them more difficult to guard because you really can’t sit in the paint and try to clog it up. You’ve got to respect those – Bree Hall and Paopao from the outside.”

South Carolina went on to win the tournament thanks to wins over Washington State and Baylor, and the Gamecocks didn’t lose another game all season.

“We had an island party after that,” Staley said. “It was really cool.”

The loss to Indiana was a turning point for that young South Carolina team that hadn’t faced any adversity yet. In that sense, it’s hard to say this is a revenge game since that loss ended up being beneficial. But it also prevented South Carolina’s first undefeated season.

“It’s a vivid game that I remember losing,” Staley said. “I looked back at that box score and they scored 20 fourth quarter points and we scored six. Yikes.”

This season, South Carolina is again young and hasn’t had to face much adversity. But it would be nice to do a solid for the 2019-20 team, which also didn’t get an NCAA Tournament.

Mackenzie Holmes is the only player on either team who played in that game. She had eight points and six rebounds in 16 minutes.

5. Scouting the Hoosiers
Mackenzie Holmes gets the bulk of the attention for Indiana, and rightfully so. Indiana doesn’t get much bench production but that doesn’t mean Holmes doesn’t have help. 

Indiana’s entire starting five averages double-figures in scoring. Holmes averages 20.0 points and Sara Scalia averages 16.4 to lead the way.

But Indiana gets almost nothing from its bench. The Hoosiers’ entire bench averages less than 15 points per game. South Carolina’s super sub MiLaysia Fulwiley averages 12.2 points by herself.

Clearly, if South Carolina can force Indiana to go to its bench, that benefits South Carolina.

The Ws
Who: #1 South Carolina 34-0 (16-0 SEC) vs #4 Indiana (26-5, 15-3 Big Ten)
When: 5:00 EDT (approximately), Friday, March 29
Where: MVP Arena, Albany, NY
Watch: ESPN

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