The SEC may be the toughest conference for women’s basketball, but one team stood at the top: South Carolina.
With a tough defense, envious depth, the ability to get points from any position or any spot on the floor and a germ-free chemistry, the Gamecocks earned the top seed for the week’s SEC tournament, which begins Wednesday at Gwinnett Arena.
With a target on their back, the No. 5 Gamecocks (26-3) will begin tournament play at noon Friday against the winner of Thursday’s game between Georgia and Vanderbilt.
“The biggest thing we will tell them and what we’ve told them all season long is focus on the task at hand,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said. “The task now is Georgia or Vanderbilt.”
Focus hasn’t been a problem.
The Gamecocks have lost three games this season, two in the SEC. They were beaten at Texas A&M 67-65 in overtime Jan. 16 and at Tennessee 73-61. The loss to the Lady Vols occurred Sunday in the regular season’s final game after the Gamecocks clinched the tournament’s top seed.
“They are a handful for anybody,” said Arkansas coach Tom Collen, whose Razorbacks were beaten by the Gamecocks 55-51 on Jan. 2 and 67-49 on Feb. 9.
They are a hard team to plan for because they don’t have one scorer that teams can focus on. Sophomore guard Tiffany Mitchell is the team’s highest-scorer at 15.5 points per game, with junior forward Aleighsa Welch (13.9 points per game) and a pair of 6-foot-4 centers in freshman Alaina Coates (12.2) and junior Elem Ibiam (9.5) supporting the points production.
With that quartet, South Carolina had the SEC’s fourth-best scoring offense (73.9 points per game) and highest shooting percentage (48.1). SEC coaches praised the Gamecocks’ defense, which has the best field-goal percentage (34.5 percent) and is second-best (54.9 points per game) in points allowed in the conference. Look at the rest of the defensive categories, and the Gamecocks will be found at, or near, the top of most of them.
If they have a weakness, it was what cost them the loss to Texas A&M: free throws. They rank ninth in the SEC with a 67.7-percent accuracy rate.
But they offset that by making the highest percentage of their shots (48.1 percent).
“They are a team that has all the pieces,” said Georgia coach Andy Landers, whose Lady Bulldogs were lost to South Carolina 67-56 on Feb. 27.
Tennessee’s Holly Warlick said they beat the Gamecocks by matching their physical play, which required the Lady Vols not to worry about the shots that Coates and Ibiam blocked (four of the team’s five in the game), and to keep trying to take high-percentage shots near the basket.
“You’ve got to stick with your game plan,” Warlick said.
Staley credits the team’s chemistry for its success. Instead of going their separate ways last summer, she said the players stayed on campus playing pick-up games and generally spending time with each other.
“It’s made us a much tighter basketball team,” she said.
There is much on the line this week. Not only are the Gamecocks trying to win their first SEC tournament championship, they are chasing a top seed in the NCAA tournament.
Staley said finding that focus will again be the key, as it has been all season.
“At this point, we only have two guaranteed games to play,” she said. “The rest will be on us on taking care of whether or not we will be able to survive.”
Season awards: Staley was announced Tuesday as the SEC coach of the year. Mitchell is the league's player of the year, and Coates is the league's freshman of the year.
Joining Mitchell and Welch on the all-SEC first team were Mississippi State’s Martha Alwal, Auburn’s Tyrese Tanner, Florida’s Jaterra Bonds, LSU’s Theresa Plaisance, Missouri’s Bri Kulas, Texas A&M’s Courtney Walker and Tennessee’s Meighan Simmons and Isabelle Harrison.
About the Author
