South Carolina will defend their newfound spot atop the SEC
The women’s basketball team will travel to Mississippi State on Thursday in South Carolina’s first game since it claimed first place in the SEC over the weekend.
The No. 6 Gamecocks (20-2, 8-1 SEC) have won 11 of their last 12 games, with their only loss coming in overtime against No. 19 Texas A&M on the road two weeks ago.
Coach Dawn Staley acknowledged it would be a challenge to keep her team from looking at how other SEC teams do game by game because it just reached first place.
“I don’t think it’s going to be an easy thing, but if we win, this is the life we chose because we keep winning,” she said. “I’d much rather be in first place than last place or in the middle of the pack.”
Freshman center Alaina Coates is fresh off her fourth SEC Freshman of the Week selection after a pair of dominating performances against Ole Miss and Missouri.
Against Ole Miss, Coates had 24 points and 12 rebounds; she logged 13 points, five rebounds and four blocks against Missouri.
Coates, along with junior center Elem Ibiam’s inside presence, have been hard for opponents to manage all season.
The two players have made an impact on both ends of the floor. Ibiam averages 10.1 points and 6.7 rebounds per game, and Coates averages 12.3 points and eight rebounds per game. Both players also average more than two blocks a game, and even when they don’t get a block, they alter their opponents’ shots regularly, making it tough to score.
Mississippi State (16-7, 3-6 SEC) is fighting to stay alive for a shot at the NCAA Tournament, but the team has lost four of its last six conference games.
Ibiam and Coates will have a challenge waiting for them in the Bulldogs’ junior center, Martha Alwal. She leads the Mississippi State squad with 15.4 points and 8.6 rebounds per game.
If Coates and Ibiam make Alwal’s day tough, the Bulldogs might have to resort to a game plan that involves more outside shooting.
If that happens, junior guard Kendra Grant and freshman guard Dominique Dillingham have shown they can contribute from beyond the arc. Grant scores 11.8 points per game and makes a little over 32 percent from long range. Dillingham averages 10.3 points per game and shoots about 26 percent from three-point range.
The Gamecocks have a balanced scoring attack, with four players averaging more than 10 points per game.
Besides Coates and Ibiam, junior forward Aleighsa Welch has played well inside, averaging 13.4 points and 7.5 rebounds per game. Sophomore guard Tiffany Mitchell leads the team with 15.5 points per game, the ninth highest in the SEC.
Still, the players said their team wouldn’t concentrate too much on being in first place.
“We know how the SEC is,” sophomore guard Asia Dozier said. “We know how unpredictable this league is. Coach Staleyreminds us all the time that any team can beat any team on any given day, so I don’t think that it’s a big focus of ours.”
Staley said the Gamecocks do a good job of taking it one game at a time and that they will be ready to take the floor at 8 p.m. on Thursday against the Bulldogs.