Final Four field is set: South Carolina joins fellow No. 1 seeds UConn, UCLA and Texas
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — There were still seven minutes to play in the fourth quarter, but the South Carolina fans inside Golden 1 Center could feel what was coming. The Gamecocks were up 20 points against TCU, and the inevitable was brewing.Thirteen minutes later, just after 8 p.m. local time, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley was hugging her staff and players were jumping at midcourt as they prepared to cut down the nets in Sacramento.Staley and the Gamecocks are headed back to the Final Four.And with that, the sport’s biggest weekend is set.The Gamecocks beat No. 3 seed TCU 78-52 in the Elite Eight to win the Sacramento 4 Regional on Monday night, making them the fourth and final team to punch their ticket to Phoenix. They’ll join UConn (which beat Notre Dame) and UCLA (which beat Duke) on Sunday, and Texas (which dismantled Michigan) earlier in the day to round out the field. As expected, all four of the remaining teams left are the No. 1 seeds, and they’re the same four teams that were in the Final Four last season.Get ready for some star power in the desert.“Any time you’re able to play on the third weekend in the NCAA Tournament,” Staley said, “it’s always special.”The action starts Friday, when the Bruins get another crack at the Longhorns, and South Carolina looks to get back at UConn in a rematch of last year’s national championship game that the Huskies won big.Texas, headlined by star guard Madison Booker, beat UCLA and Lauren Betts by 11 points in Las Vegas in November to deliver the Bruins their only loss of the season. The Longhorns haven’t won a national championship since 1986, while the Bruins have never won a title in the NCAA era. The undefeated Huskies, meanwhile, are in search of Geno Auriemma’s 13th national title and have looked the part of their dynasty with routine 30-point blowout wins this season. Staley is looking for title No. 4 — all in a decade’s time — making the South Carolina-UConn Final Four matchup a meeting of the sport’s two best and most influential coaches in the current era.
“It’s always really hard,” Auriemma said of winning an Elite Eight game and getting to the Final Four. “I’ve said this for countless years. It’s always the hardest game there is to play. It’s so hard to get to the Final Four. You always have to beat a really, really good team at this stage of the game.”The Huskies will almost certainly be favored, but if South Carolina plays like it did in Sacramento, Calif., the Gamecocks will be a tough out for any of the remaining teams, including the Longhorns in a potential national championship game, after Texas beat them earlier this month in the SEC Championship Game.Perhaps the scariest part about these Gamecocks is how they can win. As they showed in Sacramento, they can beat teams in many different ways.Saturday’s Sweet 16 win against Oklahoma was all about guard Ta’Niya Latson, who torched the Sooners to the tune of 28 points and did so in less than 30 minutes. She attacked the basket aggressively, was fearless down low and went a perfect 4-of-4 from 3 and 10-of-10 from the foul line for good measure.But Monday? The youth of the Gamecocks’ team showed up and showed out. Star forward Joyce Edwards, a first-year starter, led the Gamecocks with 24 points. And how about true freshman guard Agot Makeer, who scored a career-high 18 points and was in the middle of every big play, using her length and speed to her advantage?“I feel like my mindset changed,” Makeer said, referring to her postseason run of double-digit points in each of South Carolina’s past four games. “Starting in the SEC tournament, I just started approaching games differently.”As South Carolina’s pep band played and the Gamecocks’ confetti fell at midcourt, back in the TCU locker room, Horned Frogs stars Olivia Miles and Marta Suarez had to reconcile their illustrious college careers coming to an end.Both were dominant in TCU’s victory against Virginia in the Sweet 16, but on Monday, the Gamecocks were simply the bigger, better, faster, stronger team.That had Staley and her team dancing before they turn their sights to Phoenix. The last time the Gamecocks won an Elite Eight in California, they took home Staley’s first national championship days later.“We’re here,” Agot said. “And we’re ready to go.”
