South Carolina women’s basketball dominated around the basket in the 82-54 win against Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sunday.
The No. 6 Gamecocks (25-3, 13-1) finished the first 10 minutes with a 13-point lead, forced five turnovers and had five offensive rebounds.
South Carolina’s energy and aggression had shades of the Florida game on Feb. 13, when it came out strong and fired up offensively, something that was missing against Texas, UConn and a little bit against Arkansas.
On both ends of the floor, rebounding played a key role in the win, as coach Dawn Staley‘s squad brought down 14 offensive rebounds and 31 total boards by halftime and finished with 47 total rebounds to Vanderbilt’s 35. It had 17 second-chance points because of an extra effort off their own misses.
After the Commodores (19-9, 6-8) cut its 10-point halftime lead to six, South Carolina went on a 11-1 run that changed the tone of the game.
“We really didn’t make any adjustments. I think what we did was make layups,” Staley said. “We made layups. I thought we rebounded the ball, just really gave multiple efforts when it came to rebounding and defending.”
The Gamecocks are known for dismantling defenses in transition, which meant with every defensive rebound they got, they looked to run the floor and did so successfully, scoring 19 fast-break points.
Vanderbilt freshman Mikayla Blakes is averaging 23.4 points per game this season, and came into Sunday with two 50-point games and five 30 point games on her resume. After scoring 55 points and 34 points in her most recent two games, South Carolina held Blakes to 19 points on 5-of-15 shooting. She had four fouls and three turnovers.
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“She’s special,” Staley said of Blakes. “We tried to make her as inefficient as possible. Yes, she’s going to score points, but we wanted to make it difficult for her to score those points. I thought we did a pretty good job. I thought we made her defend, and that’s part of the process when someone is capable of scoring a lot of points, they can’t relax on defense. You have to make them guard, and I thought we did a good job of that.”
The Gamecocks didn’t allow Vanderbilt to score any fast-break points and forced 17 turnovers, scoring 23 points off of them.
“This league will eat you up if you turn the ball over,” Staley said before acknowledging some self-inflicted errors as it had 13 total turnovers. “I thought we did a good job not giving easy buckets.”
Lulu Kesin covers South Carolina athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email her at lkesin@gannett.com and follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @Lulukesin
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: How South Carolina’s rebounding ignited rout of Vanderbilt
