Her face said it all.

Chloe Kitts, after concluding a dogged first half shift with the latest in a long line of brutally physical paint battles against LSU forward Aneesah Morrow, looked exhausted. This particular one-on-one ended with Morrow missing a layup and committing a foul on the rebound, but it was one of the few times all day LSU’s superstar came up empty in a 15-point, 16-rebound performance.

Kitts showed the wear and tear of a player who fought for every inch of space in one of the most physical games of the season. She retreated to the bench looking like she was walking off from a double overtime thriller in March, not a half in January. Even with only a minute left in the half and Joyce Edwards in foul trouble, Dawn Staley still knew Kitts needed to check out and lifted from the game in favor of Maryam Dauda.

This was the poster possession of No. 2 South Carolina’s 66-56 win over No. 5 LSU at Colonial Life Arena, a rare breakdown for South Carolina’s usually well-oiled machine.

“I think we’re chameleons, so to speak,” Staley said. “We can play the type of game that’s being played. I thought we were forced to play a certain way tonight, and it was just the gravity of the game.”

In so many ways, this South Carolina (19-1, 7-0 SEC) performance was a break from the norm. The high-flying offense had its lowest point total and shooting percentage in conference play. The Gamecocks missed 16 layups. LSU (20-1, 5-1 SEC) won the rebounding battle by a dozen, and corralled a staggering 28 offensive rebounds.

Almost everything comes easy for South Carolina, at least on gameday. Staley’s Gamecocks are more talented than nearly everyone, certainly deeper and have made a habit of flashy transition scores and silky smooth offense. A program with 14 consecutive double-digit wins, 54 straight SEC wins and 69 in a row at home seldom finds itself in the mud of not just a close game, but a low-scoring one.

LSU bogged the game down in a hurry. Its defense turned every South Carolina possession into work, even the eventual scores. It was a day for bumps and bruises, with players diving for loose balls in every direction and scrapping for everything. At times, the scrums on held balls — which made the possession arrow change about as frequently as a traffic light — more resembled a rugby-adjacent version of basketball.

“It’s not really us offensively,” Staley said. “But I just thought we gave a gritty performance. We just locked in, we just continued to fight, continued to get loose balls and the 50/50 balls and the rebounds that we didn’t come up with, we were in the mix.”

Slowly but surely, it added up. Not with an earth-shattering run or a completely stifling attack, but with strength in numbers. Like a football team taking control at the line of scrimmage or a baseball team winning a series with bullpen depth, the Gamecocks rotated fresh players in to take the punishment of the game. Eight players played at least 15 minutes, a luxury LSU did not have as four of its five starters played at least 33 minutes.

You could tell by the looks on the bench, a South Carolina unit getting stronger as the game went on and an LSU one losing steam blow by blow.

South Carolina 31, LSU 2 in bench scoring.

“That’s part of it,” Staley said. “Keep pushing the ball down the floor, keep making them work hard for catches. We know they play six or seven players, and you have to use that against them. They’re that talented that if you allow them to rest on defense, they have more energy to take advantage of you on offense.”

That the Gamecocks so rarely have to play a game outside their comfort zone is a testament to the team’s talent, discipline and ability to dictate terms.

That it still beat a top-5 team by double-digits despite getting stuck outside of it is an acknowledgement of this team’s growth since the early stages of the season, and confirmation of what many already speculated.

“I think when we had the loss in the beginning of the season, we needed that honestly,” Raven Johnson said. “It made us come back together, it made us realize that you know, we can’t come back how we were last year. We have to bring something else to the table.”

This team will not go undefeated, but its ceiling is still exactly as high as last year’s: Cutting down nets on the first Sunday in April.

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