DALLAS — Four days after winning the SEC Championship, preparing to enter the NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed with a 32-1 overall record, everything ended for South Carolina in 2020.

A group of electric freshmen — the “Freshies” — mixed with experienced players Tyasha Harris and Mikiah Herbert Harrigan were preparing to attack the tournament and try to give South Carolina its second National Championship in four years.

Then the country shut down due to COVID-19. Season over. Tournament gone. Opportunity by the wayside.

“When that ended it kind of hit us in our chest,” Olivia Thompson said. “We didn’t get to see Ty or Kiki at all again after that. A lot of it was just trying to get it back for them, and for us because we kind of felt like we had it. We put everything we had into that season, so for it to end that close to the end, it hurt.”

South Carolina will never be able to fully “get it back” in terms of getting to play that tournament, but those Freshies have done everything and more to take matters into their own hands ever since.

They made it to the Final Four in the bubble tournament during their sophomore season, completed the mission by winning the National Championship in Minneapolis 12 months ago and are now trying to end their careers with back-to-back championships at their third Final Four. South Carolina will take on Iowa first in the semifinal on Friday night, with a match-up against either Virginia Tech or LSU for all the marbles lurking on Sunday.

With everyone of these experiences, everyone of these trips to the ultimate stage in college basketball and every single step closer to another championship, it is hard not to wonder what could have been. In all likelihood, the Freshies would be staring at four trips to the Final Four in four seasons and potentially could be trying for a three-peat if not for the pandemic.

“I think it motivated us because we could never get that year back,” Aliyah Boston said. “We wanted to experience that March Madness, that Final Four, that National Championship. Since that has happened, it's just something we just continue to work on because we know that is a year we can never get back to experience this.”

This recruiting class will already go down as one of the most decorated ones in college sports history. It has only lost eight times in four seasons, just once at home, won three SEC regular season championships, three SEC Tournament championships, made it to at least the Final Four in every tournament it has played in and already has one National Championship in tow.

But if it can complete the journey on Sunday, it will launch itself into stratospheric territory. One of the greatest women’s basketball groups ever, up there with UConn’s four consecutive titles from 2013-2016 or Tennessee’s spurt through the late 90s.

All of it stems back from that first disappointment in 2020, a time Thompson said the team was confused, lost and sad.

“It was so fun, especially with Ty and Kiki we wanted to keep going,” Brea Beal said. “It broke my heart a little bit, but after that we just knew we wanted to keep going more and more.”

Dawn Staley organized team-wide Zoom calls to check in with everybody while they were not allowed to practice. These players who will be linked forever started to form their tightest bonds in the middle of the toughest fires, and those experiences have held up through three more NCAA Tournament runs.

There was nothing for them to do about it, except to do everything on the court with the truncated time they have left.

They know what it feels like to lose a season because of things out of their control.

They know what it feels like to lose one because of a tournament loss, their lone NCAA Tournament loss coming in the 2021 Final Four against Stanford.

And better than most, they know how important it is to savor every last opportunity in March. Now coming into their final one, that message rings louder than ever.

“It was tough,” Laeticia Amihere said. “I felt like we were the team to beat for sure next year. But we try not to dwell on it too much, because we ended up getting our National Championship."

Three years later, the only thing left to do is get another one.