A'ja Wilson helped make a third meeting the charm for South Carolina.
In Tennessee's two regular-season victories over the Gamecocks, the Lady Volunteers avoided the Southeastern Conference player of the year, who missed the first meeting with an injury and the second with a bout of vertigo.
Wilson returned to the lineup tonight in the quarterfinals of the SEC tournament, coming off the bench to lead the second-seeded Gamecocks to a 73-62 win over seventh-seeded Tennessee at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena. She scored 24 points and pulled down 12 rebounds in just 19 minutes.
"They had confidence that their best player was back in the game for them," Tennessee assistant coach Bridgette Gordon said on the Lady Vol Network postgame show. "It kind of boosted them."
Gordon noted that Tennessee had 27 offensive rebounds and forced 27 turnovers, but 27 percent shooting and missed layups doomed the Lady Vols.
"We missed 10 easy layups at the basket," Gordon said. "We've just got to go back now and refocus and come back to work with our hard hat on and see what happens Selection Monday."
Tennessee (23-7) will learn its NCAA tournament seeding on March 12. Entering the SEC tournament, ESPN's projection had the Lady Vols as a No. 3 seed.
Securing a third win over the Gamecocks (24-6) would have been a nice boost to Tennessee's resume, especially since South Carolina had Wilson this time around. But the star forward showed why she has been the conference player of the year three straight seasons.
Wilson had scored 17 points in 15 minutes when she checked with 4:35 left in the third quarter out and ran to the locker room as Tennessee threatened to tie the game for the first time since the first quarter.
Wilson returned for the start of the fourth quarter with South Carolina leading 48-43, and that's when the Gamecocks made their surge. South Carolina began the fourth quarter with a 15-2 run to go ahead 63-45.
A Rennia Davis 3-pointer brought Tennessee within 67-58 with 2:53 remaining, but that was as close as it got.
Wilson's status entering the game had been uncertain, and so was the status of Tennessee's leading scorer Jaime Nared, who injured her hip in the fourth quarter of the Lady Vols' 64-61 win over Auburn on Thursday night.
Nared started and played all 40 minutes. She scored 15 points and had a game-high 13 rebounds. Tennessee was led by 17 points from Anastasia Hayes.
A night after Mercedes Russell attempted just two shots from the field, the Lady Vols' redshirt senior center had 15 attempts. She made only five of them to finish with 12 points in 34 minutes.
Contact David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidWCobb and on Facebook at facebook.com/volsupdate.