On Sunday afternoon in Columbia, South Carolina, Indiana Hoosiers guard Chloe Moore-McNeil dribbled toward the sideline during the first half of a tight March Madness second-round matchup. South Carolina guard Raven Johnson, engaged on defense, closely tracked her every move. Moore-McNeil eventually trailed off, passing the ball to junior guard Shay Ciezki, who was waiting to set up a score.
Ciezki moved quickly and decisively toward the basket from the elbow, looking to extend No. 9 seed Indiana’s six-point lead on the No. 1 seed Gamecocks. As she approached the basket, senior guard Te-Hina Paopao was in lockstep until suddenly, she jumped up, still in stride and blocked Ciezki’s shot attempt.
There it is.
South Carolina’s typically stellar defense awakened from its unusual slumber.
Moments later, forward Sania Feagin added a layup, and Bree Hall quickly followed with a timely 3-point basket. Feagin unleashed another layup, and star freshman Joyce Edwards drained a pair of free throws. The Gamecocks were doing what they do best: using their defense to create offense. Still, they found themselves down 26-25 at halftime, an eerie too-close-for-comfort feeling that reeked of a similar 2024 NCAA tournament matchup with Indiana during the Sweet 16.
At the start of the third quarter in that game, then star center Kamilla Cardoso and Johnson danced to Macarena shortly before Indiana put up 43 points in the second half, including a 23-point third quarter that ate into a massive lead. The Hoosiers closed the gap, making South Carolina sweat until it walked away with a nail-biting 79-74 win to keep its undefeated season alive.
No one was dancing on Sunday.
Instead, head coach Dawn Staley implored her team to dig deeper at halftime. Indiana wouldn’t go quietly. “I’m proud of our team the way they gutted up and didn’t flinch,’ Staley said postgame. ‘It wasn’t pretty, but at this time, it doesn’t have to be. You just have to score more points.”
That’s the improbability of March Madness; it doesn’t make logical basketball sense. It just has to work. With help from Feagin, who dissected the Hoosiers’ defense during the third quarter, and a push from forward Chloe Kitts, South Carolina took over the game and extended its lead, once again reaching the Sweet 16 for the fifth consecutive season after a 64-53 win. The Gamecocks ended their day with 20 fastbreak points and 18 points from 16 Indiana turnovers.
The question remains: How does South Carolina not panic after an ugly game ahead of its Sweet 16 matchup?
‘We weren’t really panicked because we know our first half wasn’t very good,’ Kitts explained postgame to 107.5 The Game. ‘It wasn’t very good because we weren’t making our shots, our easy layups ― everything like that. So, we just know we need to calm down … ‘
That’s the key: The Gamecocks are calm in adversity.
It’s how they’ve learned what it takes to win a championship. As the competition gets more challenging, South Carolina can’t flinch. As teams throw more at them, the Gamecocks can’t be too small for the moment. However, the calm isn’t just the players from year to year or any speeches that may come when the Gamecocks need them the most. The calm is also Staley. It always has been during her tenure.
Three-time WNBA MVP and four-time Olympic teammate of Staley’s, Lisa Leslie, recently dove deeper into what Staley means to South Carolina’s program. “South Carolina has been able to see it was worth it to invest in Dawn Staley – and how she changed this program and the impact she’s had on these young women,’ Leslie explained. Staley’s impact on her players extends beyond the baskets that light up the court or the back-breaking transition steals that deflate opponents. She allows her players to be them in whatever form that may be.
‘It’s a daycare,’ Staley said Sunday. ‘Not a board meeting where one person is talking at a time.’
If South Carolina hoists another trophy in 2025, her players will likely remember when everything seemingly felt heavy and impossible. But there she was, calm amid unmistakable chaos, helping the daycare run without a hitch.
“I think we created a legacy already, whether we win this one or not,” Staley recently shared. “What we’ve done over the past eight years won’t be done again. If we win another one, it just adds to our legacy in the game.”
