The South Carolina women's basketball team (30-2) earned a one-seed in the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive season and was placed in the Greensboro region. As a result, South Carolina will only have to travel a short distance to the Sweet 16 or Elite Eight rounds should it make it that far in the tournament.
Coming off an SEC tournament championship, the team gathered Monday night at Colonial Life Arena to watch the NCAA tournament selection show along with some of its most dedicated fans.
The Gamecocks went wild once their name was called.
The Gamecocks will take on 16-seed Savannah State in the first round Friday at 5 p.m. in Colonial Life Arena. The winner will then face either No. 8-seed Syracuse or No. 9-seed Nebraska on Sunday.
The chance to be homebound for the first two rounds is a new experience for South Carolina, too.
Before now, South Carolina couldn’t play in postseason games in Columbia due to an NCAA rule which prohibits the state of South Carolina from hosting postseason games at predetermined sites because of the Confederate flag at the State House. But a rule change by the NCAA now allows the 16 top-seeded schools to play first and second round games at their home arenas, even though the flag is still present in South Carolina.
“It’s wonderful, considering what we’ve had to go through the last couple years,” Coach Dawn Staley said. “Also, just the fan base we have. We know we’re probably going to draw five-digit fans in the stands.”
Last season, Staley’s team traveled 2,828 miles to Seattle for the first weekend, and the Gamecocks played in Boulder, Colorado for the first two rounds of the 2013 tournament.
But this year, South Carolina will get the chance to defend its home court, which the Gamecocks haven’t lost on since February 2013.
The opportunity to remain on campus is a big deal, sophomore center Alaina Coates said. South Carolina leads the nation in home attendance with over 12,540 fans per game.
“We really feed off of our fans and the energy that they bring,” Coates said. “And just knowing that they’re behind us for so long throughout the whole journey and that we can continue to give them possibly two more games at home. And then the fact that we can possibly give them two more games at a closer location is just a great feeling."
The trip to Columbia will be the second of the season for Savannah State, the MEAC champions. Savannah State lost 111-49 to the Gamecocks back in December.
If South Carolina faces Syracuse in the second round, it would be a rematch of an early season November game, which the Gamecocks won 67-63.
Staley said she was surprised by the fact that South Carolina has already played two of the teams in its regional but believes that could be a good thing.
“It helps us because we’ve played them,” Staley said. “We have some familiarity with them and you’re not going in blind, you’re not starting from scratch.”
Ultimately, South Carolina has its eyes on a national championship. The Gamecocks believe they have the talent to achieve such a feat and now the biggest task at hand is remaining focused.
Junior point guard Khadijah Sessions mentioned how she and her teammates set high standards for themselves at the beginning of the year and must now go out and execute.
“We control our own destiny and it’s here," she said, "so we’ve got to make sure we work hard everyday and don’t take any team for granted.”