There is no greater athletic goal in March than reaching the NCAA basketball tournament’s Final Four, and nobody has a friendlier path this year than the South Carolina women.
Dawn Staley’s top-ranked Gamecocks are 29-1 overall and have won a program-record 23 consecutive games entering this week’s Southeastern Conference tournament, which will be held 100 miles up Interstate 26 from Columbia at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville. South Carolina will begin its drive for a second national championship in four seasons on its home floor inside Colonial Life Arena, with two wins there resulting in a return journey for the NCAA tournament’s Greenville Regional.
“It’s been mentioned that we won’t have a plane trip until if we make it to New Orleans, and that’s good,” Staley said Sunday afternoon in a news conference. “I think that will help us as far as not having to log any minutes in the air or the hours in the air trying to get to this place or the next. We’ll have a close bus ride, and what we’ll need to do is make that work for us.
“We need to make this advantageous for us, but you’ve got to play the games and take care of business.”
The SEC tournament starts Wednesday, when 12th-seeded Vanderbilt faces 13th-seeded Auburn followed by 11th-seeded Missouri against 14th-seeded Ole Miss. Eighth-seeded Alabama and ninth-seeded Georgia will open Thursday’s schedule at noon, with sixth-seeded Tennessee facing the Missouri-Ole Miss winner around 8:30 Thursday night.
South Carolina, which faces the Alabama-Georgia winner Friday at noon, will have the opportunity to shine in front of a lot of familiar faces inside Greenville’s 15,951-seat facility. The Gamecocks knocked off No. 12 Texas A&M 60-52 before 17,500 fans in Columbia on Sunday, capping a 16-0 run through SEC play in which the Gamecocks won every game by multiple possessions with the exception of an 81-79 edging of Mississippi State on Jan. 20.
“There is a lot of pressure when you’re having success,” Staley said, “but this team welcomes challenges. We had the challenge of winning the regular season and going undefeated, and the next challenge is to win the SEC tournament. We’ll put that in front of them on Wednesday, and then we’ll play it out.”
Never leaving a home state throughout a women’s postseason until the Final Four was last experienced by Tennessee in 2000, when Pat Summitt’s Lady Volunteers won the final SEC tournament held in Chattanooga’s McKenzie Arena before winning two NCAA tournament games in Knoxville and two others in Memphis. The 2000 Lady Vols advanced to the national championship game in Philadelphia, where they lost to Connecticut.
Three of Tennessee’s national championship teams – 1987, 1991 and 1998 – played NCAA tournament games within the Volunteer State before the Final Four, but the SEC tournament in each of those seasons took place in Georgia.
Tennessee needs a win Thursday night to cement its streak of having played in every NCAA women’s tournament, but the Lady Vols are not expected to challenge for the league championship. The top two threats for the Gamecocks are second-seeded Mississippi State and third-seeded Kentucky.
Mississippi State ended South Carolina’s run of four straight SEC tournament titles last March and has a 25-5 overall record and a 13-3 SEC mark entering this week’s event. This is the sixth straight year Mississippi State has finished among the SEC’s top three teams, and it’s the 11th time in Kentucky coach Matthew Mitchell’s 13 seasons in which the Wildcats have finished among the top four.
Kentucky is led by former Bradley Central High School standout Rhyne Howard, who tops the league with 23.2 points per game and has scored at least 20 points in 14 of her last 15 contests. Howard’s 2.3 steals per game rank third in the conference.
All SEC women’s tournament games Wednesday through Friday will be televised by the SEC Network. Saturday’s semifinals will be on ESPNU, and Sunday’s 2 p.m. championship is set for ESPN2.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.