Can South Carolina women's basketball go undefeated again?

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It’s time to talk about it. We can’t ignore it any longer. It’s the elephant in the room, and we all know it, we just don’t want to say it out loud: South Carolina can go undefeated.

Going undefeated is HARD. The best teams in program history couldn’t do it.

The 2017 team, the first national champion, lost four games. The vaunted 2020 team had a loss. The 2022 team had two losses, both inexplicable. And last season, the Gamecocks were undefeated until the Final Four.

It’s hard.

And here South Carolina sits, six games away from a second consecutive undefeated regular season.

The Gamecocks will be favored in all six games. Three of the games are at home, where South Carolina hasn’t lost since 2020. It’s time to talk about it, right?

“We actually don’t talk about it at all,” MiLaysia Fulwiley said. “It’s great being undefeated but we didn’t bring it up yet.”

You aren’t supposed to mention a no-hitter, but what about going undefeated? Did I jinx it by asking her?

“You didn’t jinx it,” she said. “We all see it all over social media but we don’t bring it up in the locker room. We just hoop.” 

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Everyone knows it. After South Carolina routed Ole Miss, who was second in the SEC at the time, Rebels coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin tried to put the loss in perspective.

“Has anybody beat them?” she asked the room, who responded no. “We’re just a part of the community.”

UConn’s Geno Auriemma bemoaned that South Carolina took advantage of every mistake the Huskies made. When Coach Yo saw the clip on Twitter, she couldn’t resist.

“She got us all Geno. She got us all,” she retweeted.

Nobody is more surprised than Dawn Staley. She has bemoaned the Gamecocks’ substandard practice habits all season, only it never shows up on game day.

“It’s really hard to explain. We can say we have good practices but we see all the deficiencies as a staff. We walk away sometimes wondering when this team won’t perform at a high level,” she said. “And every time we play a game it’s like, (laughs). I’m trying to explain it, I’m trying to understand it. What I’m finding out is they’re competitors. They really don’t like to lose. That ain’t a bad thing.”

Near the beginning of the season, Raven Johnson said the goal was to win every game. She was speaking in the micro – approach every game with the intent to win, not the macro – approach the season like you want to go undefeated.

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Yet, here they are, just a handful of games away from going undefeated.

“We just take one game at a time. Coach (Staley) always tells us it’s just another game, take it as another game,” Johnson said after the UConn game. Then she changed her answer. “Coach (Lisa) Boyer always tells us there’s three parts to the season. It’s another part of the season and we’re not done yet.”

Last season, going undefeated might have become a burden. Despite their public protests to the contrary, players would admit off the record that they felt the weight of the world on their shoulders. 

“The Freshies played with a lot of pressure,” Staley said. “This team doesn’t play with a lot of pressure. They just play free. And I’m used to pressure. It’s pressure. You’re 23-0. There’s pressure that comes with that. I guess we’re taking on all the pressure as coaches and allowing them to play their game, which is a cool dynamic. I’d rather have that than the other way around.”

Whether they feel pressure to go undefeated or not, it is about to ramp up. Barring an epic collapse, South Carolina will enter the postseason with the best record and as favorites to win it all. That’s real pressure.

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