KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Joyce Edwards said what everyone was thinking after South Carolina women’s basketball’s 70-63 win at Tennessee.

“Let’s just say we’re looking forward to the bye week that we have ahead,” she said with a smile. “A lot of recovery. But we knew that these games were going to be tough.”

After beating five top-20 opponents in 16 days by an average of 18.6 points, South Carolina (20-1, 8-0 SEC) finally gets its open week to catch its breath. Even an NCAA Tournament run is unlikely to feature five consecutive games against such opponents with a 16 seed in the first round and a mid-tier opponent in the second.

When the stretch started, South Carolina had three wins over teams in the bottom half of the conference after the new year. It was still working through the loss of Ashlyn Watkins, and in some respects still had not fully formed its identity.

Now the Gamecocks have a firm grip on the SEC regular season title race, are halfway to a third consecutive undefeated conference regular season and are clearly on a shortlist of favorites for another National Championship.

Monday was not a work of art in itself, a game the Gamecocks started and ended poorly but did enough in between to take a seven-point win back on the plane. Tennessee (15-5, 3-5 SEC) started the night on a 14-5 run and ended it with a 24-9 one, using a mix of its relentless pressing, a dizzying 111 substitutions to keep everyone fresh and a clearly fatigued South Carolina team to cause havoc and create stress.

Not enough to win, though, a testament to the mental fortitude of this South Carolina squad after a demanding January.

“I would much rather have Tennessee at the end of this,” Dawn Staley said. “Because it’s hard to recover after having to play this style of play and having to go back out and play another game. It happened at the right time.”

South Carolina now gets six days before it hits the court again, and two games against SEC minnows Auburn and Georgia coming out of the break. Of course even if it is not the specific challenge of five ranked match-ups in a little over two weeks, March and April will consist of a similar gauntlet if this team is going to reach its ultimate goal.

Playing LSU on Friday and Tennessee on Monday is not the same as, say, Notre Dame on a Friday and UCLA on a Sunday would be at the Final Four, but the tight turnaround and mental focus required is at least something in proximity. Likewise what it had last week — No. 19 Alabama on Thursday and No. 13 Oklahoma on Sunday — roughly equates to two teams of about Sweet Sixteen caliber in quick succession.

An exhausted group still showed it had plenty to iron out in the fourth quarter, letting a 22-point lead dwindle down to six as it limped across the finish line. Another 17 turnovers, 18 offensive rebounds allowed and close Staley could only call a stretch of “bad decisions” made this win less comfortable than it should have been.

But 5-0 is 5-0, and that’s nine wins over ranked teams for the season in total.

“I think the biggest pull on this stretch is mentally,” Staley said. “Obviously it’s a physical battle in the SEC, but to do it against the top teams in this conference is hard. It’s hard. It took a lot of togetherness and a lot of different styles of play.”

Call it the January dress rehearsal for the March performance, the quiz before the final exam. South Carolina does still have to play Texas, but it is sandwiched by games against Georgia and Florida. And after Florida it will get a showdown with UConn, only for a reprieve against Arkansas four days later.

In addition to being a clear marking point of the season — the exact halfway point of SEC play and the last game before the bye week — this was also the closest thing South Carolina will get to a postseason stretch until the real thing.

“We’ll take two days off,” Staley said. “We’ll take probably tomorrow off and Thursday off and just get back to the swing of things. I’m sure some of our players will need to recover and just decompress a little bit.”

While it could have been cleaner, nobody is arguing with the results and the impact it will have on this season’s goals.

Or the need for rest.

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