BATON ROUGE, La. — Into the tiger’s cage they went, and out they emerged.
In what can only be described as an instant classic, No. 1 South Carolina women’s basketball took down No. 9 LSU 76-70 after 40 breathless, captivating, spell-binding minutes of basketball inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
It was a game wrapped inside several, a Russian nesting doll spread across a 94-foot long canvas Dawn Staley declared as “basketball utopia” in the midst of 13,205 frenzied Cajuns and a few splashes of garnet-clad Gamecocks who braved the hostility.
"It had all of the dynamics of what you want every women’s basketball player to experience,” Staley said.
There was the game LSU (18-3, 5-2 SEC) dominated, darting out to an 11-point lead and testing the architectural fortitude of its 52-year-old home. The Tigers had the upper hand almost the entire night, surrendering their advantage just a flimsy 14 seconds out of the first 34 minutes.
It featured a never-ending duel in the paint, every inch of real estate painstakingly won and lost. Angel Reese and Aneesah Morrow combined for 31 LSU points. Chloe Kitts and Kamilla Cardoso hit back with 25.
Almost at the drop of a hat it swung the other way, briefly turning into a 3-point shootout with enough blasts to make you forget there were 86 total paint points. Four 3-pointers in the final five minutes, two haymakers apiece.
Bree Hall hit both of South Carolina’s (18-0, 6-0 SEC), and both times they broke a tie. Hailey Van Lith answered with one, but Hall’s second one was the killshot.
“It was awesome,” Hall said. “We went back there and were like, ‘oh my god, I love you guys.’ We’re just so proud of each other and have such a real love for each other.”
Banners fly forever and ultimately define legacies for programs in the rarified air South Carolina inhabits. It is the deal you make with the devil when you win two National Championships. Every year is about the next one, and anything short of it is viewed as underwhelming. This group learned that lesson in the harshest way possible last April when a 36-0 season hit a wall in the Final Four.
But there are games that win you banners, and games that stitch them.
No matter what the kicker is on the 2023-24 South Carolina women’s basketball story, there is no way to tell it without Thursday. It was the night Hall silenced a record crowd. The game Raven Johnson made the South Carolina bench start waving twice. First, when she jumped an inbounds pass and galloped down court to draw a fifth foul on LSU superstar Angel Reese.
The visitors made sure to let Reese know she was done for the evening with 4:02 left. And then when she saved a broken play, taking the onus with a drive to the basket that culminated in a layup which gave her team its first — and only — two-possession lead of the game.
This time the Gamecock bench turned around for their waves, directing them at a mass exodus of Louisianans realizing the spectacle had nothing left.
“What you saw is just her making two competitive moves,” Staley said about Johnson. “It was huge to get Angel out of the game. It was huge when she went through all of her options of the set that we wanted to run. She couldn’t complete any of the options, she put her head down and made a play.”
This is another brick in the wall, another night to remember and yet another seemingly miraculous marker of the program’s golden era.
South Carolina did not win a National Championship on Feb. 2, 2012 when it finally emerged victorious in Knoxville to erase an 0-20 all-time road record against big, bad Tennessee. But it was the night Staley emerged with her clearest proof of concept yet, and was the signature win of her first NCAA Tournament season. Would anyone forget what it meant?
The Gamecocks did not cut down any nets on Feb. 10, 2020, the day they finally broke the hex against mighty UConn after eight failed attempts. But would any fan take more than one second to tell you exactly where they were when it happened?
Dec. 21, 2021, as stupefying a turnaround as you will ever see. The Gamecocks engineered their largest comeback in program history, swinging an 18-point deficit back the other way in a Final Four rematch against No. 2 Stanford. Everyone remembers the emotional release of grinding that one out eight months after heartbreak in San Antonio. How could they not?
It stands along with nine others as part of South Carolina’s run of ten consecutive wins when trailing by at least double-digits dating back to 2021, extended again in Baton Rouge.
“We’re going to play for 40 minutes no matter what the score is,” Staley said. "They made big plays, we made big plays, it was the team that made the last play was the one that was going to win this basketball game."
This win belongs in the pantheon with any of those, as impressive and important as any regular season game you will find in college basketball. As brutal of an environment, opponent, and start as one night can feasibly present.
Some of those previous landmarks led to national titles, others did not. There is no way to know if this one will until April. But everyone thinks back fondly on those, and will on this one.
“We’re going to talk about this for years,” Staley said, before pausing. “And I hope we don’t, because they will be replaced by other experiences, and this is just normal.”
There will be more to the latter point, but the former one is correct.
Jan. 25, 2024.
South Carolina 76, LSU 70.
Would anyone forget?
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