BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley knows how hard it is to repeat as a national champion.
Her team has won three NCAA Division I tournaments in the past seven years, but the Gamecocks weren’t able to repeat after either of the first two title runs, losing in the 2018 Elite Eight to fall three wins short and in the 2023 Final Four to come up two shy.
Now, after winning it all again a year ago to complete a 38-0 season, the Gamecocks are giving the repeat challenge another try.
Southeastern Conference champion South Carolina (32-3), in the Sweet 16 for the 11th straight NCAA tourney, is the No. 1 seed in Region 2 and will face fourth-seeded Maryland (25-7) of the Big Ten on Friday at Birmingham’s Legacy Arena. A pair of Atlantic Coast Conference rivals — No. 2 seed Duke (28-7) and No. 2 seed North Carolina (29-7) — meet in Friday’s first game at the venue, with those regional semifinal winners meeting Sunday with a spot in next week’s Final Four in Tampa, Florida, up for grabs.
“I think the biggest thing in winning the championship and then coming back is the players seem to forget how hard it was. We won. We were undefeated,” Staley said. “You can kind of get drunk off that success and think, ‘Oh, we can do it again.’ It’s much harder than they could have ever imagined.