South Carolina women's basketball: Five Things to Watch - No. 4 Texas

No. 2 South Carolina travels to no. 4 Texas on Sunday for the first time as conference opponents. Here’s how to watch and what to watch for.

1. Rebound
The coaches have told the Gamecocks to box out and rebound so much that you can tell the players are tired of hearing it. But it appears to have gotten results: South Carolina outrebounded Georgia 47-28.

“I used to say rebounding isn’t a skill set, it’s a decision,” Dawn Staley said. “You’re either going to do it or you’re not going to do it. We’ve got to put some bodies on some people.”

With all due respect to the Lady Bulldogs, the Longhorns present a tougher challenge on the glass. The Longhorns grabbed 20 offensive rebounds against the Gamecocks a month ago in Columbia and a fifth of their total scoring was from second-chance points.

“It’s no good to defend as well as we defend and give up 22 offensive rebounds,” Staley said. “That puts too much pressur eon us having to defend another 20 seconds.”

Kyla Oldacre led Texas with 16 rebounds, 12 on the offense end, despite only playing 20 minutes. She was able to tip missed shots around, usually to herself, and keep the ball away from South Carolina.

2. Guarding Booker
South Carolina was able to overcome the offensive rebounds by holding Texas to 27.9% shooting. There was a lot of poor shooting to go around, but nobody had a worse day than Madison Booker. The preseason SEC Player of the Year had just seven points on 3-19 shooting. 

“She had a bad game,” Staley said. “You’ve just got to break up her cadence and disrupt the flow of how she wants to play the game.”

Booker bounced back in a big way, averaging 25.3 points and 5.3 rebounds in the next three games. She cooled off a bit, but not much. Booker is averaging 20.1 points and 7,3 rebounds while shooting 51.9%.

Bree Hall was the primary defender on Booker and used her length to do what Staley said and make everything Booker did, beginning with catching the ball, difficult.

“Coach has said that it’s going to be the law of basketball basically that she’s going to hit some more shots and I have to consider that going into the game,” Hall said. “But I’m going to have essentially the same idea of what I want to do against her and just play the same way that I’ve been playing.”

Sania Feagin was asked if she thought Hall could replicate the performance.

“I do actually.”

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3. Big Game(s)
This game has huge implications for the SEC regular season championship race. 

South Carolina (10-0), Texas (9-1), LSU (9-1), and Kentucky (8-1) have separated themselves as the four teams that still have legitimate hopes of winning the SEC. The three one-loss teams still have to play each other, so they are going to knock each other out of contention.

A win by South Carolina would all but clinch another SEC title. There would still be work to do to claim the top seed in the tournament, but there would be a new addition to the banners at Colonial Life Arena.

“We’ve been in situations, games like this. I think we are prepared for something like this and if we execute the things that are in our gameplan, we’ll be fine,” Hall said.

Staley had hoped to attend the Super Bowl after the game. She already had tickets to see her beloved Eagles play. But her plans to take a private jet from Austin to New Orleans fell through and she’ll have to watch at home.

Staley will fly back to Columbia with the rest of the team and they will have a Super Bowl party together. (Staley also returned her tickets instead of, say, donating them to one of her beat writers.)

At least that means if the Eagles win Staley won’t have to worry about locking herself out of her hotel room like she did in 2018.

Staley did not have a prediction, but she said, “We just want to have the ball at the end.”

4. Availability report
Ashlyn Watkins will be Out for South Carolina. She had surgery on her torn ACL on January 31.

Laila Phelia is Out for Texas. She announced a few weeks ago that she would redshirt this season after an eye injury cost her all but a few games early in the season. 

Aaliyah Moore is also expected to be Out. She hasn’t played since January 23 due to knee soreness. Moore started and had four points and four rebounds in 18 minutes in the previous game against South Carolina.

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5. Scouting the Longhorns
Not much changes with teams at this time of the season. 

Texas still has a top-ten scoring offense (although it was top-five a month ago) that runs through the midrange game of Booker and Rori Harmon. They don’t take or make many threes (despite going an uncharacteristic 9-13 in the last game against Vanderbilt).

The Longhorns have an elite defense that focuses on defending the paint and rebounding.

“I think they’re playing a lot more inspired,” Staley said. “I think they are running the same stuff. This time of the season you’re going to go with what works, you’re not going to change it.”

But Vic Schaefer is too good of a coach not to come up with some wrinkle, according to Hall.

“Any good team is going to have some different stuff, so I expect something different probably,” she said.

The Ws
Who: #2 South Carolina (22-1, 10-0) at # 4 Texas (23-2, 9-1)
When: 2:00 ET, Sunday, February 9
Where: Moody Center, Austin, TX
Watch: ESPN

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