The South Carolina women's basketball team hosts No. 19 Tennessee Sunday, a matchup between the two schools sitting at the top of the SEC leaderboard. The two programs are the only members in the conference to have lost fewer than two SEC games this season.
The Volunteers are 15-5 (7-1 SEC) and coming off a bounce-back win over Georgia following a 96-66 route by No. 1 Connecticut Sunday. The Gamecocks are 23-2 (9-1 SEC) and have won four straight games after losing in overtime to No. 16 Oklahoma.
The Daily Gamecock spoke with Tyler Edmands, a sports staff writer for The Daily Beacon, to talk all about the upcoming matchup. Tip-off is at 3 p.m. at Colonial Life Arena. The game will be broadcast on ABC.
The Daily Gamecock: What has been biggest for Tennessee's identity so far?
Edmands: "On paper, you look at it, and they've got a lot of good pieces. They brought in Janiah Barker. I mean, Nya Robertson was the second leading scorer in the ACC last year, and it is just a bunch of one-on-one players trying to play as a team as of right now. There will be games where they have under 10 assists, and that will be one of the first things people will ask (head coach) Kim (Caldwell) in postgame availability, and she's like, 'Oh, we just need to work on sharing the ball,' and she has said that since media day. Until they can figure out how to get each other the ball and how to give everyone a touch, it is gonna keep looking like this."
"Last year, the identity was shooting the 3s and defending well, pressing all the way up and down the court. I feel like this year, it's been weird because they lost two key pieces in Jewel Spear and Samara Spencer, and they just don't really have a true 3-point shooter. Mya Pauldo can shoot — she's a freshman point guard. Talaysia Cooper obviously does her thing, but outside of that, I'd say as a team, just off the eye test, they're probably shooting about 25%, and when your scheme is built around knocking down the 3, you don't win games like that."
When you have a good defensive team like South Carolina, how do you think they'll attack with that ISO-ball mentality? Do you think they scheme up for a specific player?
"I think Kim is going to tell them to go out there and shoot the open looks. She's gonna tell them to get to the rim, like she has every game this season. And my thing has always been the first three minutes of the game, they just forget they can go to the basket. You'll see the ugliest four 3-pointers you've ever seen, and then they're like 'Wait a minute, we can just go into the paint.' This is a team that also starts incredibly slow, so that'll be interesting to watch."
"Them coming out in the first quarter and third quarter is when they put themselves in the biggest holes. If you watched any of that UConn game from Sunday, they went down 16 right off a rip, 18-2, fought back into it 42-42 at halftime, and then got absolutely outclassed in the third quarter. And then the fourth quarter, they just rolled over and died. I think they just need to get inside. They're not gonna win this game by shooting 3 pointers."
How is Tennessee going to get in the paint and attack the basket offensively? Has that been something they've done this season?
"Tennessee has zero presence inside on defense... I assume that'll probably be the deciding factor in this one. Either Tennessee is either going to keep doubling (Madina Okot) with Spearman and Janiah Barker, or she's probably gonna go for about 30."
"You look at the rest of the team, Mia Pauldo is 5 (feet), 6 (inches tall), her sister, who plays a lot of minutes too, is also 5 (feet), 6 (inches tall), and this is a very just small team. They went out and got Barker in the portal. I thought she was gonna be more of a interior presence after spending a season with Lauren Betts and learning from her, but she is a 6-(foot)-4-(inch) forward that wants to pretend she is a 6-foot guard ... She shot 42, 44 3s heading into her fourth year of college basketball, and I would say she's easily doubled that number this season."
If Tennessee gets warm from 3, do you think that they can give South Carolina a run for their money?
"I definitely think they could, but I've only seen that in very few situations this season ... this season it just really hasn't clicked from 3. The two games that they have kind of impressed me have been Auburn and Florida at the beginning of SEC play, when they put up under 20 3s in both games, and they shot their highest percentage. They got to the rim, and they won the games handily. Granted, it was Florida and Auburn, but they just looked a whole lot better than what they come out and try to do."
"Looking at all of these games, there's not a single game in SEC play where I think it's been like, 'Oh yeah, it's been a good shooting night tonight.'"
How do you think Tennessee will handle a physical, front-court-heavy team like South Carolina?
"I'd say a lot of it is going to have to be them doubling. That's something that they've had a pretty consistent theme of, and that's what happens when you run a full-court trap. They do a really good job of playing positionless basketball on defense. I'll give them credit here, their defense has been the reason they have been on top of the SEC ... They've done a really good job getting back, they'll communicate, they'll switch, they'll double. They'll press out in half-court, too, and you'll see that a lot of teams get flustered."
"Mississippi State in that first quarter had 9 points, and then they figured it out in the last three quarters. But pressing out and playing physical defense has definitely been a key characteristic of this Tennessee defense so far. And I think a lot of this doubling is going to have to come into play, but what's going to be important to them too is bringing that two-slide — I think in lacrosse terms — but the two-slide, and they have to guard back out on the perimeter."
"A lot of other teams have had some issues with this press too, and their back court will get tired, really tired. Then that's when the mistakes start happening."
Score prediction for the game?
"I'm gonna go South Carolina 82, Tennessee 66. I think this game should probably have about a 13-point spread, at least ... For UConn, people were like, 'Oh, they're gonna lose by 40, they're gonna lose by 40,' they only lost by 30, which was also the second-biggest loss in Tennessee women's basketball history."
"This will be a good one to watch."