ATHENS, Ga. — South Carolina women’s basketball had its lowest-scoring half of the season in the first 20 minutes against Georgia. It turned the ball over 10 times, shot under 30 percent from the field and never led.
But once the turnovers cleared up, the No. 1 team in the country looked like itself again. The Gamecocks outscored the Bulldogs 21-11 in the third quarter and 42-22 in the second half to grind out a 68-51 victory in its first road game of the SEC schedule.
Zia Cooke entered the game on her hottest offensive stretch of the season with four consecutive games scoring 14+ points, but she put up her career-high 31 points on 8-of-19 shooting and 4-of-12 from 3-point range. Not only was it Cooke’s best performance of the season, but it was the greatest offensive outing by any South Carolina player in more than four more.
“I think just staying consistent,” Cooke said was the key to her night. “Coach kept telling me to keep shooting my shot. There were times I wanted to stop shooting, but she just consistently told me to keep shooting. I listened to her, my teammates found me and I was moving to the ball.”
For long stretches of play, Cooke was the only South Carolina (14-0, 2-0 SEC) player keeping the offense afloat. The big lineup anchored by Aliyah Boston and Kamilla Cardoso — Dawn Staley’s typical remedy for slow starts this season — was not its usual efficient self against a tightly-packed paint. Boston and Cardoso combined to shoot 2-of-9 in the first half and 5-of-15 in the game.
And in what is suddenly becoming a recurring, concerning trend for the Gamecocks, turnovers plagued the first half. A total of 10 first half turnovers were only the latest episode for this team, following on from 15 turnovers against Texas A&M, 15 against Coastal Carolina and a stretch of three straight games with at least 20 back in November.
Georgia (11-5, 0-2 SEC) took advantage of the turnovers to lead the entire first half, holding an advantage as large as seven points. Ugly possession after ugly possession prevented South Carolina from ever taking control as Georgia’s Audrey Warren and Brittany Smith both scored in double-figures.
“I just told them that there was a difference between what we just did and what we needed to do,” Staley said was the message at halftime. “One, we’ve got to make lay-ups; obviously we didn’t do that very well in the first half. Two, we’re always going to take people’s best shots. And three, I thought they [Georgia] were just scrapping it. They got all the loose balls, the 50-50 balls. We just had to weather the storm.”
But after halftime, Cooke took over.
She scored 20 points after halftime and 15 in the fourth quarter, almost single-handedly erasing memories of the first half and sucking the oxygen out of a spirited Georgia performance and what Staley called a “rocking gym” at Stegeman Coliseum.. The Bulldogs’ paint-packing defense in the first half was leaving shooters open with chances to swing momentum, but between sloppy passes leading to turnovers and misses, it never happened until Cooke took matters into her own hands.
Her electric fourth quarter made her the first South Carolina player to score 30 points in a game since Te’a Cooper did it against Drake in 2018, and the first time anyone in the program has broken the 30-point barrier in an SEC game since Brionna Dickerson scored 31 against Ole Miss in 2009.
“She took great shots,” Staley said about Cooke. “She didn’t force anything, and when she did force something it was going towards the basket where she got fouled. I just wanted her to continue to shoot the ball."
Those free throws aided her explosive night; Cooke was 11-of-13 from the line and 7-of-9 in the second half as part of a team effort where South Carolina went 17-of-23 on free throws.
The Gamecocks will return to Colonial Life Arena and cross over the halfway point of the regular season on Thursday night against the Auburn Tigers.
