Is South Carolina playing with fire in bid to repeat as champion?
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — MiLaysia Fulwiley was in the process of dribbling out the final seconds of top-seeded South Carolina’s 71-67 victory over Maryland when her behind-the-back dribble move was poked away from her. In an attempt to regain possession, Fulwiley was whistled for a foul. For an instant, it was unclear if any time remained. Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley and Terrapins coach Brenda Frese thought the game was over and embraced at midcourt.
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The officials reviewed the time of the Maryland foul, however, and put half a second back on the clock. Celebrations were paused. South Carolina would have to wait even longer to march on to its fifth consecutive Elite Eight.
It was a fitting end to the Gamecocks’ victory that lacked the crispness many have come to expect from them. Even dribbling out the clock became complicated for the Gamecocks against the fourth-seeded Terrapins.
“Not a pretty one, that’s all I have to say,” sophomore guard Tessa Johnson said.
The performance raised the question: Was Friday’s performance merely a blip on the Gamecocks’ path to winning back-to-back championships? Or was it a harrowing alert that this year’s team might be stopped short of its goals?
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“Is it ugly? Yes,” Staley said. “Are people going to say this doesn’t look like a national championship team? Well, I mean, we didn’t look like one last year to most in the beginning of the season.” And yet South Carolina survived a close tournament win over Indiana, remained undefeated and won a national title anyway.
Two years earlier, the Gamecocks mostly rolled to a championship. But in 2017, as Staley noted, they were a four-loss team that fought its way to a title. Each run has its own characteristics.
Ugly wins are part of March. Great teams find resilience and eke out victories when they don’t play their best. But for the second consecutive game, the Gamecocks were behind at halftime.
Against the Terrapins, the Gamecocks led for only three more minutes than they trailed. Between the 7:14 mark of the fourth quarter to 2:55 remaining, South Carolina shot just 1 of 9. The Gamecocks were playing with fire. They didn’t get burned Friday, but, “that game was definitely a little messy,” freshman forward Joyce Edwards said.
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“We looked like (a champion) in ’22,” Staley said. “‘(In) ’17, we didn’t look like one. I think we’re back to where we don’t look like one, and hopefully we can win it and even it out.”
But hope alone won’t be good enough for the Gamecocks to achieve their goals. They might be able to pick up another win over second-seeded Duke on Sunday if they don’t play their A-game. The Blue Devils grinded out a victory of their own in the Sweet 16, shooting 31 percent while holding North Carolina to just 38 points in a 40-minute game. But a title?
That feels more tenuous for the Gamecocks, who entered the NCAA Tournament with three losses. That’s an incredible season for most teams, but it’s their most defeats since 2021.
Edwards acknowledged that the Terrapins knocked South Carolina out of sync Friday. At times, Maryland doubled South Carolina’s bigs, disrupting the flow of the Gamecocks’ offense that relies heavily on its frontcourt. Dozens of South Carolina passes were deflected — some stolen, some just tipped enough to mess up timing on cuts. The teams were called for 37 combined fouls, leading to countless stoppages. The game’s final 35 seconds took more than 15 minutes in real-time.
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South Carolina trailed by as many as 7 points early in the third quarter. Down by 6 with 4:37 to play in the frame, it went on a 7-0 run, flipping the slight deficit into a 1-point lead. Amid the sprint, Fulwiley hit a layup and assisted one of the other baskets. The 5-foot-10 guard finished with 23 points and three assists. She was one of the few players who knifed through Maryland’s defense with relative ease.
“We would rather stay here for longer than we want to than to be home,” Fulwiley said. “Nothing is long when you are in March Madness.”
Except for South Carolina’s runs to the Final Four. Those usually span weeks of winning — and often include SEC tournament titles and NCAA Tournament blowouts.
But maybe their successes from this season will be for naught. Against Indiana in the Round of 32 and Maryland in the Sweet 16, very little came easily. Even a Bree Hall free throw with 21.6 seconds remaining that iced the game, went in and out, and back in.
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Frese, like Staley, is a national title-winning coach. She spoke afterward about the pride she felt in her players. Like South Carolina, the Terrapins were resilient during both the regular season and Friday, fighting for 40 minutes in front of a decidedly pro-Gamecocks crowd. But as Frese reflected on Maryland getting dispatched from the NCAA Tournament, she also commented on another possible aspect of its legacy.
“I think we gave a pretty good blueprint on how to beat South Carolina, to be quite honest, for the teams moving forward,” she said.
Maryland packed the paint and held South Carolina to only 8 second-chance points. The Terrapins aggressively attacked the basket, especially in the first half when they attempted 16 free throws. They forced 18 turnovers, turning South Carolina’s giveaways into 18 points.
Of course, in March, the only thing that matters is the final margin.
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“We’re on to the next one,” Johnson said. “You’re gonna have some ugly wins, but that happens in basketball.”
The Gamecocks will fight for another day, and no alarms should be sounded just yet. Instead, South Carolina players talked about watching film and finding ways to improve.
After a 4-point win, which tied their second-closest margin of victory in an NCAA Tournament game since 2015, the Gamecocks expressed a different emotion alongside the joy of moving on.
“I was relieved, too,” senior forward Sania Feagin said. “We were down half of the whole game. We can’t do that anymore.”
Or South Carolina’s season will come to an abrupt end.
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This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
South Carolina Gamecocks, Women’s College Basketball, Women’s NCAA Tournament
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