The No. 2 ranked South Carolina women’s basketball team improved to 20-0 on Thursday night with an 81-62 win over the Ole Miss Rebels who are now 10-10 and 2-5 in the SEC. The Gamecocks took care of business in a game that was never really close. South Carolina led from wire to wire after they notched the first six points of the game.
“I thought the first eight minutes of the game, our girls were scared to death,” said Ole Miss head coach Matt Insell of his team, which features exactly zero seniors and thus minimal road experience. Outscoring the Rebels 24 to 11 in the first quarter, the Gamecocks never looked back.
The game looked easy for South Carolina most of the night. The Gamecocks demonstrated their unselfishness passing the ball by having 24 assists on only 31 field goals. Four players on the team had four or more assists. “We shared the ball and the ball found who should shoot it,” head coach Dawn Staley said. That kind of passing left the team with lots of open looks and allowed them to shoot just over 45 from the field and rarely pressing for shots.
The Gamecocks simply overpowered the Rebels in the post, out-rebounding their opponent 45 to 28. Junior center Alaina Coates had an efficient 13 points on only 9 shots while also collecting 14 rebounds to complete her double-double. “I thought Alaina came out and, you know, just asserted herself on the boards, then it was pretty much just a trickle-down effect,” Staley said. Sophomore forward A’ja Wilson bounced back after playing below her usual standards against Mississippi State and finished with 17 points and nine rebounds.
The Gamecocks still have plenty of room for improvement as the season enters the home stretch. The Rebels shot 48 percent from the field which is an unusually high number for the normally stingy Gamecock defense to allow. Shandricka Sessom played all 40 minutes for the Rebels and poured in 26 points on 11 of 21 shooting. South Carolina really seemed to struggle defending Sessom as she ran off ball screens all night, something that other SEC opponents may now try against the Gamecocks. Finally, shooting 50 percent from the free throw line as South Carolina did on Thursday night will oftentimes get you beat, especially on the road against a top ten opponent such as Texas A&M, the team the Gamecocks play in College Station, Texas on Sunday 4 p.m. ET.
South Carolina earned yet another SEC win, but not without showing some flaws. The team will need to clean up their act if they hope to remain undefeated after the upcoming three game stretch of Texas A&M, Kentucky, and finally a matchup against No. 1 Connecticut Huskies.