SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament – South Carolina Set to Play Vanderbilt
Despite some bumps in the road, the South Carolina women’s basketball team locked down the top seed in the SEC women’s basketball tournament, partially due to a coin flip that ultimately made the decision between them and Texas. Now the Gamecocks also know who their first game in the tournament will be against.
The Tennessee Volunteers defeated Texas A&M in the first round by 40 points which advanced them to the second round against Vanderbilt. However, it was Vanderbilt who came away with the win on Thursday and they will be the ones who face South Carolina.
The Gamecocks defeated Vanderbilt in the regular season by a final score of 82-54.
Head coach Dawn Staley spoke after the regular seson finale win over Kentucky and when asked what it would take to make a deep tournament run with this team, she had plenty of areas of improvement.
“It’s by far the toughest one we’ve entered. What do we need to do (to win)? I mean, we got depth – you need depth in this tournament to win this tournament. You need to take care of the basketball; you need to rebound. And you need to take good shots. I think those are things that we have to be very disciplined, and other teams have to be very disciplined in doing those things, in order for you to get through this tournament – even to reach Sunday.” Staley continued, “Our players are familiar with the tournament, and with having success in the tournament, but that actually goes down the drain. It starts over, it starts anew, because we have two teams that we didn’t have to deal with last year – and that’s Texas and Oklahoma. They have an impact on the outcome of the regular season and now, in the tournament.”
South Carolina will play on Friday at 12:00 PM ET. If the Gamecocks win, they will play the winner of Kentucky’s third round matchup.
