South Carolina women's basketball: Gamecocks dominate in the paint to advance to the championship game
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The South Carolina women’s basketball team took down NC State 78-59 to book a ticket to the National Championship on Sunday. Powered by play in the paint, the Gamecocks dominated the boards, blocks and scoring.
South Carolina outrebounded NC State 46 to 32 and the Gamecocks came up with six blocks to the Wolf Pack’s one.
“Really our main priority of the game was to box out and rebound,” South Carolina’s Te-Hina Paopao said. “Their guards average six, eight rebounds a game. So our main priority was to box out and rebound. But when you play a defense like that, we’re locked in and we try to keep it going.”
Coming off the bench, Ashlyn Watkins made her mark, snagging 20 of the team’s rebounds. 15 of her boards were defensive, silencing the NC State offense.
“Ash has been working so hard all season long,” Cardoso said. “That’s no surprise for me. Nobody can jump as high as her. Ash is gonna play for 40 minutes, and I’m just so proud of her.”
Watkins is the first Gamecocks with 20 or more rebounds since Aliyah Boston had 22 in the 2022 Sweet 16 against North Carolina. She also had two blocks and scored eight points to pad her stat sheet. Dawn Staley said she was the X-factor for the Gamecocks.
“I mean Ash is Ash,” head coach Dawn Staley said. “Ash is she’s a leaper. She’s a jumper. She’s a reactor. For her to come through for us was big. We don’t win the game without her contributions.”
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Watkins’ teammates did all they could to help Watkins keep the ball in her hands. Sania Feagin and Kamilla Cardoso both said they wanted to help her get that rebound number as high as possible.
“That’s what we do. As post players, if we feel like oh, she needs three rebounds to get a double-double, we’re going to tip it to her or just box out so she can get it. That’s just how we work,” Cardoso said.
The Wolf Pack scored 20 points in the paint, but it was no match for South Carolina’s 44. Cardoso didn’t play during the fourth quarter, and she scored a team-high 22 points under the rim for the Gamecocks.
“I mean, you play to your strengths,” Staley said. “Kamilla is a strength of ours. She’s 6’7″. She’s agile. She can command the paint. She plays with a desire to win. I think she asks for the ball a couple of times as well, meaning get her the ball.”
Cardoso also grabbed 11 rebounds, and eight of those were defensive.
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South Carolina’s suffocating offense in the paint forced NC State to switch to playing zone coverage. But nothing they came up with was enough.
The moment the Wolf Pack switched, the Gamecock guards started knocking down shots from the perimeter. Paopao, Raven Johnson, Tessa Johnson, and Bree Hall all hit threes in the second half to counteract NC State’s defense.
“They were keying on Kamilla. Look at the kind of game she had,” Tessa Johnson said. “They were keying on Kamilla so people are going to be open once they do that.”
“We scored 44 points in the paint. I don’t think it’s all clean, but we’re not going to worry about anything besides scoring more points than our next opponent. That’s one area we can’t control,” Staley said. “But we can control how we execute and how we put the ball in the hole, how we rebound the basketball, how we execute ball-screen defense, how we win loose balls, and the intangible game.”
