Despite trailing by nine points at the half, coach Dawn Staley and the South Carolina women’s basketball team are heading to the national championship for the first time in program history.
A double-double from A’ja Wilson and 18 points from Allisha Gray led the one-seeded Gamecocks to a 62-53 victory over two-seed Stanford in the Final Four at American Airlines Center Friday night.
"First of all, I just want to say to God be the glory that we're in this position, to play for a national championship," Staley said. "Something that is so very hard to do. Sometimes when your kids play on this stage, they don't quite come out and execute like they have in their minds, like we prepped."
The Gamecocks opened the game by keeping pace with the Cardinal and led by two at the end of the first quarter. Stanford struggled from long range, going 0-for-3 from behind the arc.
Behind 10 points from leading scorer Emily McCall and eight from Marta Sniezek, Stanford led USC 29-20 at the half. With two to three players guarding her each possession, Wilson was limited to four points.
"It was very frustrating. It was very tough to remain tough. But it was something I've seen before in the SEC. Playing in the SEC, I see that kind of every night. It wasn't anything that I haven't seen. It was just a matter of this time, it was kind of frustrating because I felt like I wasn't really in the play offensively," Wilson said.
Gray led the Gamecocks in scoring with five first-half points. Both teams saw minimal trips to the free throw line in the first half, with USC making 2-of-6.
Trailing by nine at the half, the Gamecocks put together an 11-0 run over three-and-a-half minutes to take a four-point lead in the third quarter. Despite the almost double-digit deficit, Staley was confident her team could refocus and gather their thoughts during the break.
"I just wanted to get our kids to the locker room at halftime because I knew, no matter how many points we were down, we could utilize our speed to get back into play, whether that's trapping in the halfcourt, whether that's picking up full court, whether that's coming off ball screens, setting our players up in positions where they could be effective," Staley said.
Bianca Cuevas-Moore sank a 3-pointer from the corner and Doniyah Cliney layed in a basket off a precise pass from Tyasha Harris to shift the momentum in USC’s favor. Stanford rallied with back-to-back jumpers, but a putback from Mikiah Herbert Harrigan kept the Gamecocks up by four at the end of the third quarter.
Gray followed with a putback of her own at the beginning of the fourth quarter, extending the Gamecocks’ lead to six.
"Our energy was down, we just needed to play to our tempo, start pushing tempo. Once we get that, we got on our run," Gray said.
The Gamecocks fell into a two-minute scoring drought until Wilson grabbed her own offensive rebound, found a gap in the inside defense and went in for the easy layup. With 4:14 left in the game, Wilson bulldozed her way into the lane and made a layup while falling to the ground. The SEC Player of the Year finished with 13 points and 19 rebounds, while Harris and Cuevas-Moore added 10 and seven points, respectively.
Although they shot 36.5 percent from the field, the Gamecocks maintained their defensive prowess all game long. They forced 16 turnovers on the Cardinals and came up with six steals, including two each from Wilson and Cuevas-Moore.
"That is exactly why, you know, we built our reputation on defense," Staley said. "You're going to have bad shooting nights at times. This was one of them."
The Gamecocks held Karlie Samuelson scoreless the entire game, after she twisted her lower leg in the second half and had to be carried off the court. She returned to the game in the third quarter, but went 0-for-2 from the field in 25 minutes of play. McCall and Smith led the Cardinal in scoring with 14 points each.
"I think our team got a little out of rhythm, even at the end of the first half, when Karlie came out. We did not come out as aggressive as we needed to be. I thought we were really short on a lot of shots," Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said.
With the win, USC will take on the winner between UCONN and Mississippi State in the national championship game at 6 p.m. ET Sunday.