South Carolina women's basketball: Undefeated again, the Gamecocks know what to do in the NCAA Tournament

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South Carolina has been here before. The Gamecocks are undefeated going into the NCAA Tournament and the overwhelming favorites to win it all. This season’s team is radically different from last season, from the players to the style, but the more things change, the more they remain the same.

“Being undefeated and winning the natty is definitely the goal,” Bree Hall said on Selection Sunday. “Honestly, the goal from last year is the same as this year.”

The road to this point has been well documented: South Carolina replaced all five starters and two-thirds of its scoring and minutes played, yet never missed a beat.

Just win, baby!

Even the most optimistic person expected the Gamecocks to experience some growing pains this season and lose a few games. And, yes, there were growing pains. But there were no losses.

“This whole season has been learning lessons through winning,” Dawn Staley said during the SEC Tournament. “Yes, we won a lot of basketball games, but there were a lot of things that we need to work on, a lot of deficiencies that we need to work on. And this team has responded time in and time out.”

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It was never more evident than in South Carolina’s three games in the SEC Tournament. They committed a season-high 24 turnovers in the quarterfinal game against Texas A&M, and then needed a buzzer-beating three against Tennessee, and then survived a benches-clearing brawl in the championship game against LSU. 

It was an entire season’s worth of adversity crammed into a single weekend. The Gamecocks weathered all of it and just won, the same as they had all season.

“I’ve been around a lot of basketball, none happier than I am for our players,” Staley said after the Tennessee game. “Really it flashed in front of me. What are the headlines going to say? Some of y’all have written y’all’s stories already, got to change it up a little bit.”

Survive and advance

Being undefeated is not as important as the path to this moment. A lot of different players had to grow and evolve in their roles. They had to make sacrifices for the good of the team. They also learned that style points don’t count.

The weekend in Greenville was far from South Carolina’s best basketball of the season, but it may have been their most resilient. For a team that is short on postseason experience, that matters.

“I think the biggest thing for us is going out there with one mentality and that’s just to win,” Hall said. “Not look at any of the stats or anything of that nature, just go out there and get the win and move on to the next.”

Staley said it “feels good” to be undefeated going into the tournament, but it’s not the most important thing.

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“I’m excited because we get a chance to know what our path is to win a national championship,” she said. “I really don’t even think about being undefeated. I think more about being the number one overall seed because it’s a really hard place to be. It means we played a really tough schedule, you’ve been successful, you’ve done something right for the majority of the season.”

She might be trying to reduce the pressure of being undefeated. By the time last year’s team got to the Final Four in Dallas, the Gamecocks were feeling the weight of expectations and it contributed to the loss in the national semifinals. 

Now the Gamecocks have their second chance to become just the tenth undefeated team in history. They just need six more wins.

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