SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Dawn Staley and South Carolina are back in a familiar place — the Final Four.
Joyce Edwards scored 24 points and Agot Makeer added 18 to help the Gamecocks beat TCU 78-52 on Monday night to advance to the national semifinals in the women's NCAA Tournament.
Recommended Videos
South Carolina (34-3) has now reached the Final Four in six straight years and won two national championships during that stretch. Staley has been at the helm for all of them, including the undefeated 2023-24 season.
“Super proud of this team, a lot of unknowns coming into the season. Our ranking and what people thought of us was off our history,” Staley said. “We had too many holes, but I’m happy we were able to fill them and compete on the third weekend of the NCAA Tournament.”
The top-seeded Gamecocks will face UConn in the Final Four in Phoenix on Friday night in a rematch of last season's national championship game.
“You got to keep the game close, got to be able to score,” Staley said of the undefeated Huskies. "We aren’t going to be keeping them from 25 points under their average. You got to go pound for pound and be unafraid playing against an undefeated team.”
This was the first time that the Gamecocks really had been challenged in the NCAA Tournament. They came into the game averaging nearly 100 points a game in their first three contests and were winning by an average of 45 points.
The Gamecocks have so many offensive weapons making them tough to guard. The Horned Frogs (32-6) did a good job on the South Carolina guards, but had no answer for Edwards and Makeer. Edwards also had 12 rebounds and three blocks.
The pair scored the first 12 points of the fourth quarter to blow an eight-point game wide open. South Carolina outscored TCU 29-11 in the fourth.
“I’m so proud of her, she came in and made a huge impact,” Edwards said of Makeer. “She came in and played basketball like we know she (can).”
South Carolina trailed 22-18 early in the second quarter before going on a 17-5 run to close the half. Edwards had the first six points of the spurt and hit a jumper with 3 seconds left to close the quarter and make it 35-27. She had 14 points, six rebounds and three blocks in the opening 20 minutes.
The Horned Frogs hung around in the third quarter and cut their deficit to 47-39 on Olivia Miles' layup with 1:26 left. She immediately went down and grabbed her left calf. The senior All-American guard was on the ground under the basket for a minute before getting up and going over to the area behind the bench where trainers worked on the calf.
Miles missed the rest of the quarter, but was back for the start of the fourth.
“I’m doing better now. just dealing with some cramping stuff, preventing my movement a little bit,” Miles said. “I got to play in an Elite Eight game and try to get to the Final Four, just tried to play through it.”
She came into the game averaging a triple-double in the NCAA Tournament, but finished with 18 points, three rebounds and six assists.
TCU was trying to reach its first Final Four and has now been eliminated in the Elite Eight in consecutive seasons. Coach Mark Campbell welcomed 10 new players this season once again taking advantage of the transfer portal.
Miles and Marta Suarez were two of the key additions this season. In the Sweet 16 win over Virginia the pair combined to either score or assist on all 79 of TCU's points. Suarez had a rough game against South Carolina after scoring 33 points in the win over the Cavaliers. She finished with just nine points on 4-for-17 shooting.
Up next
South Carolina will face UConn for the first time this season. The two teams had played each other for the past 11 years, but took this season off. They'll meet again the next two years.
___
AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-womens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness