South Carolina women's basketball (20-2, 6-1 SEC) is hitting the road to face the Auburn Tigers (13-8, 2-5 SEC) on Thursday. The matchup will be the second all-time between head coach Dawn Staley and first-year Tiger head coach Larry Vickers.
The Gamecocks are coming off a massive home victory over No. 5 Vanderbilt, a team that entered the game with a perfect 20-0 record. Staley's squad dismantled the Commodores in a 103-74 trouncing, earning the team its seventh 100+ point outing this season and its first against an SEC opponent.
The Tigers enter Thursday's game off a close 72-65 home loss to the No. 16 Oklahoma Sooners, a team that had just handed the Gamecocks their second loss of the season in an overtime match three days prior.
While their record may not imply it yet, things are looking up for the Tigers. The program posted a higher win total through 20 games this season than across all 30 games in the previous year.
In the 2024-25 season, Auburn finished with a 12-18 record that included a 3-13 record within the SEC. The team fired head coach Johnnie Harris following the season's close, and saw all but two players leave the program ahead of the 2025-26 season.
Later that offseason, Auburn tapped Norfolk State's Vickers to become the program's next head coach. Vickers became the first women's basketball head coach to jump right from an HBCU to a Power Four program since 2013.
A Virginia Beach native, Vickers wasn't far from home coaching for the Norfolk State Spartans. He attended the school as a student, and his 6-foot-9-inch frame helped him walk on to the basketball team in his second year. Directly following the completion of his three-year playing career, he joined the team's coaching staff as an assistant.
Vickers later became the associate head coach of the women's team, a role he retained for three seasons. After a 0-16 start to the 2015-16 season, the Spartans fired their head coach and promoted Vickers to interim for the remainder of the year. The team posted a 3-8 record in its final 11 games, with five of the eight losses coming by single digits.
Impressing enough to be hired as the program's head coach that March, Vickers and Norfolk State didn't post a losing record again, excluding a shortened 14-game season due to COVID-19. His 177-99 (.641) resume helped him dominate the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, winning the conference and earning trips to the NCAA tournament in each of his final three seasons.
Norfolk State's first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 2023 landed the team a 16 seed and a dance with none other than Staley and the Gamecocks. South Carolina defeated the Spartans 72-40 en route to the completion of its perfect 33-0 season, but the round-of-64 game carried more value to Vickers' program.
"We played on ESPN ONE, like the first one," Vickers said. "Not two, not three, not plus, we played on ESPN today ... the exposure that you can get from this tournament is amazing, and we appreciate the whole week. Hopefully next time, we can get a 15 (seed) or a 14."
Staley shared similar sentiments after the game regarding the school's low seeding.
"I'm gonna say it today so we can prep for next year: Norfolk State is not a 16 seed," Staley said. "Very well-coached, very disciplined. They play for 40 minutes. They run some great stuff. If it wasn't for the way we played defense, they would've probably given us a lot of troubles."
Vickers and Staley had their wishes granted in each of the next two seasons. The Spartans entered the 2024 tournament as a 15th seed, then as a 13th seed in 2025.
In his final season with the team, Vickers guided the Spartans to their first 30-win season since joining Division I in 1997. The historic campaign included a 2-1 record against the SEC, with one of those wins coming by a 63-57 upset against Auburn on the road. Auburn's athletic director was in the stands for the game, Auburn's first home loss that season.
"My current boss, John Cohen, was at that game," Vickers said. "They liked our style of play, they liked the intensity that our team played with, they liked how we executed on both ends of the floor."
That road victory for the Spartans sparked a 19-game win streak that lasted until the NCAA tournament, where No. 4 Maryland defeated Norfolk State 82-69 in the first round. The Terrapins would eventually bump into South Carolina in the Sweet 16, where the Gamecocks earned a 71-67 victory to advance.
Fast forward to January 2026, Staley and Vickers are set to cross paths once more, this time as conference rivals.
"Larry's a great coach," Staley said. "When we played them at Norfolk State, you can tell, like the sentence I used to tell him all the time was, ‘You run some great stuff. You really do, and you challenge us to stay locked in for longer periods of time on defense.’"
Inheriting a program with just two players on the roster, Vickers spent the off-season rebuilding Auburn's program and retooling its coaching staff. Among the additions was Candice Jackson, a former assistant coach at Virginia Commonwealth University. Jackson says she made the 10-hour move from Richmond to Auburn because of her trust in the head coach.
"I wouldn’t come to Auburn for a whole lot of people," Jackson said. "He was an engineering major, so engineers just naturally think differently. The way that he’s able to teach that in a basketball perspective, it’s always been intriguing."
The Tigers started their 2025-26 season a perfect 8-0, the first time the program had done so since the 2008-09 season. Auburn was led by six-time WNBA All-Star DeWanna Bonner that year, a campaign that saw a 29-3 regular season record and a trip to the SEC championship game.
Vickers' team earned its first SEC win of the season earlier this month against arch-nemesis Alabama, who was ranked 22nd in the AP poll at the time. The Crimson Tide's only loss of the season up to that point was to South Carolina.
"I texted him and congratulated him on getting his first SEC win," Staley said. "He's got them playing well. He's got them flying around on both sides of the basketball."
What's next?
South Carolina will look to hold off an Auburn team who has flashed sparks in conference play all season. Tipoff is at 9 p.m., and the game will be broadcast on ESPN's SEC Network.