Different Gamecocks, same results
South Carolina is unbeaten again, but heads into tournament season with a new cast and approach.
Among the many singularities of Caitlin Clark is her ability to stand in front of speeding trains and survive. In last year’s NCAA semifinals, she scored 41 points and Iowa won, 77-71. The loser was South Carolina, which came into that game 37-0. Iowa went on to lose to LSU, another locomotive, in the NCAA finals, but Clark already proved she could storm a court that had been impregnable.
Now another women’s NCAA tournament beckons. The question is not whether Clark can take her slingshot out beyond the 3-point line and bring South Carolina down, in the event they meet again, but whether anyone can.
The Gamecocks scored 80.3 points per game last year and had an average victory margin of nearly 30. But over 50 of those points left the program, including those provided by Aliyah Boston, the first-overall WNBA draft choice and the unanimous Rookie of the Year.
When this season began, South Carolina was ranked sixth, only because of the returning Kamilla Cardoso and to the resourcefulness of coach Dawn Staley. In the Gamecocks’ first two games, they defeated 10th ranked Notre Dame, 100-71, and 14th-ranked Maryland, 114-76. So much for sixth. South Carolina assumed its usual position and is 4-0 against ranked teams since.
It is also 29-0, having won 47 consecutive regular season games in the SEC and 57 consecutive games at home. Who knew that Goliath could qualify for arm and leg replacements?
Clark’s runaway popularity made last weekend’s Iowa-Ohio State game the most-watched college hoop game of the season, regardless of gender, except for North Carolina’s men beating Duke. It drew more eyeballs than Boston’s win over Golden State, which was basically over after the first quarter but still sizzles like few other pro matchups. Since a rising tide lifts all boats, South Carolina’s exploits are getting the requisite attention. Any sport needs a standard-bearer. But it’s doubtful that anybody fully realizes just what the Gamecocks are putting together.
They have not lost a regular-season game of any kind, to anyone, since Dec. 30, 2021. That was a 70-69 overtime loss at Missouri. However, they won the NCAA championship that year and finished 35-2. In the 2021 season they got to the Final Four and lost to Connecticut. In 2020 they were on a 26-game roll and had a 32-1 record when the whole show closed because of Covid-19.
That means South Carolina has won 159 of its past 168 games.
UConn has the record winning streak of 111. It did not lose between November of 2014 and the final day of March, 2017, when it lost in overtime to Mississippi State in the national semifinals. That came in the middle of UConn’s record streak of four women’s national championships. The Huskies also had streaks of 90 and 70 games in the previous decade. So South Carolina has no visions of dynasty, at least not yet, although it has the “nasty” part down pat.
Still, this is heady stuff when you consider the Gamecocks’ schedule and the dramatic improvement in the women’s game. Staley has lived all of that. Like Tennessee’s Pat Summitt, Staley was an elite player, both at Virginia and on three victorious U.S. Olympic teams. There was no WNBA when Summitt’s playing days ended at Tennessee, but Staley played eight years for Charlotte and Houston and averaged five assists for her career. Before that, she was the national college player of the year twice at Virginia. After that, she coached Temple to six NCAA tournament appearances.
Staley also symbolizes the game’s breakthrough in a more practical way. She’s in the middle of a seven-year, $22.4 million contract at South Carolina. There will be a statue of Staley in front of the state capitol building in Columbia, a place where a Confederate battle flag once flew from atop the dome. She isn’t the first Black woman to win an NCAA championship. Purdue’s Carolyn Peck was. But Staley has become a towering figure in the Palmetto State, to the point that it’s a big deal when she drops by to watch the state high school championship game, featuring All-American Joyce Edwards of Camden, who has signed to play for the Gamecocks beginning next season.
Like most Philadelphians, she’s not shy. When Brigham Young fans reportedly greeted a Black volleyball player from Duke with racist words, Staley canceled a 2-game, home-and-home series with the Cougars. When Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who has been friendly with Staley, sent out a tweet that praised Georgia Senate candidate Kelly Loeffler for criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement after the 2020 death of George Floyd,, Staley went straight for the “send” button. “The ultimate division is in this tweet,” Staley wrote. “We shall overcome.”
Staley was almost as tart when she saw the relative unpreparedness of the Gamecock squad that worked out last summer. She likened the ‘23 team to a “doctorate program” and said the nascent ‘24 team was more like “day care, a lot of talk in the locker room about nothing.” Obviously that’s changed, and for South Carolina to actually redeem all its good play with an NCAA championship, it had to change. Early indications are promising.
While Clark was lighting up the sky in that NCAA semifinal, Iowa coach Lisa Bluder ordered the Hawkeyes to swarm the lane and gave South Carolina’s shooters an embossed invitation to fire away. They missed 16 of 20 three-point attempts, and the starting lineup went 0 for 8. It was the only way to play the Gamecocks, and it was no secret. They shot 31 percent from “three” all season.
This time around, South Carolina has joined the 21st century and shoots the long ball at a 40.1 percent clip. Raven Johnson, who had three of the four 3-pointers against Iowa, shoots a 33.9 percentage, but three other players – holdover Bree Hall, freshman MiLaysia Fulwiley and Oregon transfer Te-Hina Paopao – have put up more than 100 threes and all are surpassing 40 percent, including 48.6 percent from Paopao. The paint power remains, thanks to Cardoso’s 58 percent shooting and 14 rebounds per game. Ashlyn Watkins is the occasional dunker who averages 7.2 boards, and Chloe Kitts averages 6.1 in just 19 minutes. Five Gamecocks average double-figure scoring, led by Cardoso’s 14.1, and nine average 5.6 or more. They have made almost as many free throws (378) as the opposition has attempted (383).
The effervescent Paopao (pronounced Pow-pow) grew up in San Diego and was quickly identified by Washington All-American and WNBA champ Kelsey Plum. Both went to La Jolla Country Day High, six years apart, and at a camp, the 10-year-old Paopao beat Plum on a crossover move. That put Paopao on the fast track, but then she had ACL tears in back-to-back high school seasons. She overcame those to play well enough to Oregon to get most people’s attention, including Staley’s.
Paopao has already said she’s passing up the WNBA to play for Staley next season. By then the 6-foot-7 Cardoso will be gone, although she’ll be quite visible in the WNBA and in world competitions, playing for Brazil. Her season highlight, so far, came at a practice last week, leading up to the final home game and Senior Day ceremonies, vs. Tennessee. Suddenly Cardoso’s mother and sister, Janette Soares and Jessica Silva, showed up at practice. They never had seen Kamilla play a college basketball game.
That was another delivery by Staley, the lifelong point guard. She has often talked of her one aspiration as a coach, to serve as the “dream merchant” for her players. Redemption of the 2024 dream will be fulfilled or denied at the 3-point line, assuming Caitlin Clark hasn’t rolled it up and taken it home.