Prior to Sunday’s game, seniors Khadijah Sessions, Tiffany Mitchell, Asia Dozier, Sarah Imovbioh — who has only played one year at South Carolina — and Tina Roy had 115 wins against just 17 losses in their four seasons playing basketball for the Gamecocks. The team needed a win against the Louisiana State University Tigers Sunday to move to 28-1 on the season, 16-0 in SEC play and for the seniors to notch their 116th win at USC. And win they did, with a score of 75-39.
After a slow start and a first quarter in which the Gamecocks allowed an inferior team to hang around, they pulled ahead in the second quarter, outscoring the Tigers 24-11, to take a 38-19 halftime lead. Mitchell, a two-time SEC Player of the Year, scored 15 first-half points and finished the game with a season-high 24 points and five assists in her final regular season home game at Colonial Life Arena.
After a pregame video narrated by Roy called “We Did It,” which listed the accomplishments of the class of 2016, and pregame introductions that Gamecock fans packed the arena 20 minutes early to see, head coach Dawn Staley gave all five of her seniors a spot in the starting lineup. LSU won the opening tip, but that’s about all the losing the Gamecocks did on Sunday. South Carolina never seemed to break a sweat in this game, much like this whole season.
“Our seniors make it look so easy. I know it’s not easy, but they make it look so easy,” Staley said.
The Tigers came into the game with a 9-19 record on the season, but one of their wins was against Tennessee, the No. 24 ranked team in the country at the time, and LSU was looking to knock off another top-ranked SEC team. However, the Tigers were simply overmatched by the Gamecocks. The Tigers shot a dismal 28.9 percent from the field compared to 51.2 percent for the home team, only made two shots from beyond the three point line against the Gamecocks’ 10 and also committed 20 turnovers. Rina Hill scored 16 points in a losing effort.
The 16-0 record in SEC is a first for the South Carolina program and has only been done one other time in conference history. Staley has seen her team’s SEC win total increase every year since her arrival in Columbia eight years ago, and that has now culminated with a perfect season in conference play.
The Gamecocks will move on to the SEC tournament in Jacksonville, Florida, where they will be the top seed. “You know, we're not done,” Staley said, reminding fans after the game that senior night does not mean the season is over. The team’s next game will be on Friday, March 4 at noon where they will face the winner of the eighth- and ninth-seeded teams in the SEC tournament quarterfinals.