They had to work for it, but the South Carolina Gamecocks have made their fifth Final Four in a row.
The team secured the feat with a 54-50 win over the Duke Blue Devils on Sunday, despite trailing late in the third quarter and struggling to be their usual dominant selves on the glass.
It’s not the first time South Carolina has sweat out a win this tournament — in fact, other than their opening 60-point win over Tennessee Tech, they have trailed all three opponents they’ve played in the subsequent rounds of Women’s March Madness.
“At this point it’s not going to look pretty,” Staley said after the win over Duke. “There are stretches in each game that is not going to look pretty. If you watch all the games, maybe the score at the end of an UConn game is not indicative of how it looked in the first two quarters. So some of it’s not going to look as smoothly as us coaches and players envision or how you practice, but you certainly have to get down and play the kind of game that’s presented in front of you, and we’ll do that.”
They started out strong, finally “punching first” as senior guard Te-Hina Paopao stated they needed to do after the team pulled out a win over Maryland, stating they needed to play more tough than their opponent to start, and set the standard, instead of having to play catch-up.
South Carolina did just that as they opened the game on a tear, building a 10-2 lead through the first five minutes of play, with Chloe Kitts tallying five points while Sania Feagin had four points and three rebounds.
At the end of the quarter, South Carolina led 16-10 shooting 56 percent from the floor while holding Duke to 25 percent from the field. That punch-first defense was a controlling point for the Gamecocks as they kept Duke to 1-for-15 shooting on contested shots, including going 0-for-12 in the paint early on.
But the Blue Devils bounced back quickly, cutting an 11-point Gamecocks lead with 6:16 left in the half down to three as the half came to an end.
To start the third quarter the Blue Devils went on another 8-0 run, holding the Gamecocks without a basket for nearly eight minutes before Feagin hit a jumper.
Freshman standout Toby Fournier did all she could for the Blue Devils, leading the team with 18 points, six rebounds and three blocks, including a pick-and-roll bucket to tie the game with less than five minutes to play. Jackson added 13 points, 3 rebounds and 6 assists.
But South Carolina outscored the Blue Devils 16-8 in the fourth quarter, going on a 10-0 run late, with Kitts and Feagin continuing to rally as Kitts finished with 14 points and 4 rebounds, while Feagin added 12 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 blocks and 3 steals. Te-Hina Paopao added 9 more points, 2 rebounds and 2 steals.
The too-close-for-comfort win isn’t the kind of basketball South Carolina likes to play — their identity lies in strength in the paint, overpowering defense and their depth that has seen multiple players in double-digit scoring figures as they earn each victory this season.
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But other teams have taken notice and have played South Carolina’s game at their level, packing the paint, forcing fouls and turnovers, making the game a defensive struggle and forcing weak shots to disrupt offensive flow.
“I thought they were very effective,” Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley said. “I thought they forced us into taking some bad shots that almost ended our season. Really. Especially in the first half. And then the second half I thought we tried to get the ball where it needed to go. Sometimes they disrupted that. But at the end of the day, I thought when we had to make plays off of broken sets, we did it in the fourth quarter, and I think that was the difference between them coming back and building the lead and us bearing down and making sure we win those broken play battles.”
Through it all, South Carolina always find a way to come out on top, with Kitts and Paopao leading the way late against Duke alongside Feagin and Raven Johnson. The team looks to win back-to-back national championships for the first time in school history, something they were unable to do in 2023 despite being heavy favorites.
They’ll now face either No. 1 Texas and No. 2 TCU in the Final Four – Texas being a team South Carolina beat in January, then lost to in February, before having the last laugh at the SEC Tournament. The Gamecocks and Horned Frogs only met once this season, ending in a lopsided 85-52 win for South Carolina.
TCU finished their season on a 10-game winning streak including the Big 12 Championship, the first in program history. Powered by Hailey Van Lith, who looks to rewrite her personal narrative after her LSU transfer was less than desirable, the guard is averaging 17.9 points and 5.5 assists for TCU, and was named the Big 12 newcomer and player of the year
Even in that discouraging loss, Van Lith had 21 points and six assists. She’ll be the difference maker the Gamecocks will need to play their signature defense against – they struggled to shut down Fournier and Ashlon Jackson, and Van Lith is a player who is coming in with a chip on her shoulder.
As for the Longhorns, the No. 1 seed, they haven’t been to a Final Four since 2003, but have been to the Elite Eight four times in the last five years. The only time they haven’t? In 2022, when their season was ended by Van Lith, then at Lousiville, as she delivered 21 points on 63.6 percent shooting.
Texas will bring centers Taylor Jones and Kyla Oldacre to shut down TCU’s Sedona Prince, and are one of the toughest physical defenses to play against, forcing almost 21 turnovers per game
One of the most effective teams inside the paint, Texas will also rely heavily on wing Madison Booker, who brings length that TCU will struggle to guard. She’s averaging 16.4 points and 6.8 rebounds per game.
Either way, the next team that South Carolina plays is going to defend heavily, force weak, contested shots and play with the same pressure that both Duke and Maryland have already brought while also having scorers in the paint and beyond the arc.
The Gamecocks will need their offense to find rhythm without breaks and continue to play their stifling defense, and above all, play with grit.
“With Texas, we’re going to muck it up just like we do in the SEC conference,” Staley said. “If it’s TCU, much the same because they can score a lot of points. I just hope that we can get our offense going a little bit. We can’t seem to just to play a little more fluidly. I thought that we played with a lot better pace than we did on Friday (against Maryland). So the pace will help some, but, you know, when you have two teams that really defend, it’s going to look like that.”
