South Carolina women's basketball: Back at #1 and maybe better than ever?

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It felt like heresy to even think it, let alone say it.

Sitting in the media workroom after #6 South Carolina’s 114-76 dismantling of #14 Maryland, I made idle chat with another longtime beat reporter. We tried to dissect what we had just seen, and then we got quiet.

Dare I say it? Surely it was blasphemy, especially with Aliyah Boston and A’ja Wilson, the two best players in program history, sitting courtside for Tiffany Mitchell’s jersey retirement. 

“They looked better than last year,” I said quietly, then quickly added a qualifier, “But it’s one game.”

But Maryland coach Brenda Frese had no problem saying the quiet part out loud.

“Wow! Clearly what you saw was South Carolina is a really, really good team,” Frese said. “I actually think they’re better than last year’s team.” 

Better than a team that went undefeated in the regular season and won 36 games? Better than a team that was considered top-ten all-time before getting upset in the Final Four? Better than a team that had five players drafted?

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Except for the pandemic season, Maryland and South Carolina have played every year since 2016, so Frese has seen all of South Carolina’s best teams. She probably knows the Gamecocks as well as any coach outside the SEC.

This was supposed to be a down year. South Carolina’s two-year stranglehold atop the AP poll was over and the Gamecocks entered the season only ranked sixth. That lasted one week. On Monday South Carolina was back at no. 1.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Rumors of their demise were greatly exaggerated. Pick you favorite cliche.

Critics were eager to dance on South Carolina’s grave. Even Dawn Staley wasn’t sure what she’d get this season, preaching “expect the unexpected” during preseason practice.

“I didn’t see this,” Staley said. “If you could have seen June, July, August, if you could have seen that, (…) it was unimaginable what we were able to do the first two games of the season.”

The players embraced “expect the unexpected,” but where Staley said it out of caution, they said it out of confidence. They knew the team was deep and versatile this season. They knew they were more talented than outsiders thought.

“Our whole team, we’re all skilled. We all work together, we put that extra work in every day,” Chloe Kitts said. “We can all get a bucket, but not just get a bucket, we play together. We all make the extra pass. We’re not worried about our points.”

For every approach Maryland tried, Staley made a substitution to counter. Someone asked Frese why she didn’t change tactics, and Frese sounded almost exasperated when she said, “Well, we did.”

Those highly-recruited but little-used players who seldom got in the game were still practicing, and there is some truth to the joke that Gamecock practices are tougher than games. They got better, only nobody outside the team saw it. 

[Win two tickets to the South Carolina-Kentucky football game]

During grueling summer workouts the seven returning players and five newcomers built chemistry. They played pickup games that were as physical as anything they’ll see in the regular season, followed by Molly Binetti’s Final Four Fridays, workouts designed to make 40 minutes of basketball seem like a breeze.

“From the beginning of summer to now, we’ve developed a lot,” said Tessa Johnson. “It just shows our chemistry.”

And they bonded over the pain of last season’s Final Four loss. It didn’t matter that half of the players weren’t on that team, or that they will never share a uniform with the Freshies, whose careers ended with the disappointment. The loss, and the glee it elicited from certain people, united the team.

“It’s definitely a statement because a lot of people were…” Johnson said, pausing to choose her words.

“Were doubting us,” Kitts picked up. “We’re not going to get too comfortable. We know we have the whole season ahead of us,” she added.

• RELATED LINK: Associated Press NCAA Women’s Top 25 Poll

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