GREENVILLE, S.C. — It will end in the only place it was ever going to.

South Carolina is heading to the Final Four after beating Maryland 86-75 in the elite eight, its third consecutive trip to the Final Four and fifth in the last eight seasons. The closing stop on this journey that has taken the Gamecocks from Columbia to Stanford and Hartford and seemingly everywhere up and down the country will be Dallas, inside the same arena where Dawn Staley beat Mississippi State to win her first National Championship back in 2017.

Regardless of whether or not South Carolina (36-0) completes the journey and wins the final two games, this third Final Four excursion was always coming one way or another.

It always has.

For the class of 2019 — the “Freshies” — this is all they have ever known. After losing the 2020 NCAA Tournament to COVID, this recruiting class has played in three tournaments.

Three brackets. Three sets of matchups. And now after Monday night, three trips to the Final Four.

“It definitely feels like this is where we belong,” guard Zia Cooke said. “We’ve put in a lot of work to get here. I’m just excited to see where we can go from here.”

It is now undeniable that the Final Four is indeed where Staley’s program belongs. With UConn eliminated, the Gamecocks have the longest streak of consecutive Final Fours made in the nation, and will have an opportunity to become just the fifth program in the sport to win three National Championships.

If it was ever in doubt — perhaps for a split-second when South Carolina trailed 21-15 at the end of the first quarter — a furious Freshies flurry restored the tilted women’s basketball world back to its axis.

Maryland’s first quarter margin came off the back of freneticism. A tight pressure defense, half-court trapping and trying to generate a chaotic 40 minutes with some early “jitters” as Brea Beal said. But if there is one team anywhere in college basketball accustomed to flushing jitters, to quickly calm downing and to asserting itself against a less experienced opponent, it is these Gamecocks.

“You know what it takes,” Beal said. “You know what it takes to get ahead of certain teams. They’re a long athletic team, fast, we know what it takes to slow them down and get the ball inside. It takes three years of playing the top of the top in the pre-season and getting a kind of feel for these teams.”

Beal scored 16 points, corralled seven rebounds and dished out six assists in another exquisite all-around performance. Cooke almost instantly compartmentalized a scoreless opening frame to drop nine crucial points in the second quarter before scoring another nine in the second half.

And then there was Aliyah Boston, the epitome of calm, poised control. Maryland’s (28-7) 10-0 run late in the first quarter came with her mostly on the bench. Her arrival back on the scene was the decompressor, immediately scoring on South Carolina’s first possession of the second quarter and re-establishing South Carolina’s foothold — and her stranglehold — on proceedings. She ended up with 22 points and 10 rebounds on the way to winning the regional’s Most Outstanding Player honor, only the latest line on a list of accolades resembling a dissertation at this point.

“I thought it just took us a while to get our footing, to really make adjustments to how they were playing us,” Staley said. “And once we did, we basically just fought aggression with aggression, because they were really aggressive.”

Championship experience, mettle and poise carried South Carolina through a difficult first half long enough for the talent to take over. The type of calmness that can only come from over 100 games playing together and now 15 NCAA Tournament battles. Confidence in each other, trust in the in-game adjustments and an unmistakable underlying belief in themselves as the group that has always come through.

"It just feels like we're reminiscing," senior Laeticia Amihere said. "Obviously we were hear not too long ago. We just love winning championships."

Like a GPS simply re-calculating after a missed turn, South Carolina’s seniors made their course correction and reached the destination.

The next — and final — one will be Dallas because of it.