South Carolina women's basketball: There's more than one Big Game on Sunday

It’s finally here: the day of the Big Game. The game the entire league will be paying attention to. Certainly the biggest game of the season and expected to garner massive viewership numbers. While the winner celebrates, the loser will wonder what could have been.

It’s time for South Carolina-Texas, round two. Did you think I was talking about some other game?

Just like that other game on Sunday is a rematch, so is this one. South Carolina trounced Texas 67-50 exactly four weeks ago in Columbia.

That game had all of the spicy drama of resuming the Dawn Staly-Vic Schaefer rivalry. It had been anticipated at least since the schedule came out, if not the day Texas announced it would join the SEC.

Because the outcome was never in doubt, the game itself was a bit of a letdown (although South Carolina’s FAMs were probably perfectly happy). There was also the lingering reminder that there would still be a rematch in a month.

The rematch, although it lacks some of the spiciness of the first game, probably tops it for drama.  

There are the intangibles – South Carolina could further cement its status as the SEC’s standard-bearer and extend its record 57-game winning streak, or Texas could get revenge (especially Madison Booker, who had an uncharacteristically bad game) and make its claim as a national title contender.

“We’re prepared for the environment, we’re prepared for the competition,” Staley said. “We just have to execute.”

Win tickets to Senior Day, South Carolina-Kentucky women’s basketball game

Both teams get to make their statement in front of what should be a huge audience.

This is the third year that ESPN has strategically scheduled a marquee game as a lead-in to the Super Bowl. The thinking is that sports fans are already gathered around the TV waiting on the Super Bowl, so why not give them something to watch other than endless pregame shows?

The strategy has worked. In 2023, South Carolina’s blowout win over LSU was the most-watched regular-season women’s basketball game in 13 years.

Last season, ratings were down slightly, but South Carolina’s rout of UConn was the second most-watched regular-season game on ESPN. (South Carolina had the five highest-rated games on ESPN last season.)

But it’s the basic math that makes this game so important. The winner won’t claim a championship like the winner of the Super Bowl, but if South Carolina wins, it comes pretty darn close.

Four teams are still realistically in contention for the SEC regular season title and the top seed in the SEC tournament: South Carolina (10-0), Texas (9-1), LSU (9-1), and Kentucky (8-1). 

If South Carolina beats Texas again, the Gamecocks would have a two-game lead plus the tiebreak on the Longhorns (ties are only broken for tournament seeding). They already have a one-game lead, plus the tiebreak on LSU. South Carolina doesn’t play Kentucky until the season finale on March 2.

But there’s a kicker. South Carolina has already played all of the top teams in the SEC except Kentucky. Texas still has to play LSU and Kentucky. LSU has to play Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. And Kentucky has Texas, LSU, and Tennessee before it gets to South Carolina.

They can’t all win out.

“We talk about it. We talked about it today (Friday),” Staley said. “This is for us controlling our own destiny versus looking back and we wish this person loses, we wish that person loses. We’ve got to win. We’ve got to win and not worry about all the other stuff if we lose.”

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