Set it up as a tale of the tape boxing style, and the notion looks ridiculous.
Rickea Jackson, Tennessee’s fifth-year senior forward and surefire first-round pick in next month’s WNBA Draft on one side, one of the most imposing bigs in college basketball.
Bree Hall, South Carolina’s guard who stands at just 6-foot-0, pressed into service as a post player because of severe foul trouble from all four regular bigs on the other.
Jackson drove in on the last possession of the first half, marauded through the lane she dominated all day with 29 points and eight rebounds and opened up a clear path for a layup.
Blocked? By Hall?
Blocked indeed, and No. 1 South Carolina women’s basketball never looked back in its 76-68 win over Tennessee on senior day at Colonial LIfe Arena.
“I thought she made a pretty good defensive play on her,” Dawn Staley said. “We needed that momentum going into halftime.
In a vacuum it was one snapshot in the first half of another 40-minute success for the Gamecocks. It certainly did not match, for instance, her Baton Rouge heroics with two 3-pointers in the final two minutes.
But in this particular moment, against that particular usually unstoppable force on the other side, it felt like more. Hall only found herself in the spot because Chloe Kitts, Ashlyn Watkins, Kamilla Cardoso and Sania Feagin all had two fouls, largely from trying to contain Jackson.
It forced Dawn Staley to go with her smallest lineup all year, a quintet of Hall, Te-Hina Paopao, MiLaysia Fulwiley, Tessa Johnson and mixed minutes of Kamilla Cardoso and Sakima Walker at the five closed out the first half, a combination even Paopao herself raised an eyebrow towards.
“It was kind of shocking we had a four-guard lineup,” Paopao said. “We’ve only had that in practice. So just to be able to play with it and see what it looks like, it really blew the game wide open. And when Breezy got that block, it was just electric.”
Call it a tool for specific situations, a desperation ploy in the most dire of first half foul trouble or anything else in between, but Staley found yet another lineup combination within the tight specs of a 10-player roster which changed a game. When Feagin picked up her second foul and forced Staley into the small lineup with 2:58 left in the half, the game was tied 29-29.
Hall splashed a 3-pointer, Cardoso worked inside on two straight possessions for four points, Paopao and Hall each added two more points and the Gamecocks ended up taking an eight-point advantage out of a crucial juncture of proceedings where Tennessee could have seized control.
It never happened.
Those whistles mostly evened out in the second half, Staley was able to keep a fresh rotation of bigs on the court, and the more traditional lineups ended up playing to a second half stalemate.
An eight-point win, and an eight-point spread with the four-guard lineup.
“We’d been playing with it for a little bit right before we knew that Kamilla was going to be away with her Brazilian team,” Staley said. “Didn’t feel real good about it, but I thought there was some familiarity to it because we’ve been trying to do it. It helped us stay matched up the way we needed to match up, because we needed Breezy on Rickea.”
In the last game where experimenting is really a possibility, Staley pulled some levers and found yet another way to turn a game’s dynamic and for the 29th and final time in the regular season, South Carolina (29-0, 16-0 SEC) walked off the court victorious.
The SEC Tournament will start Friday against either Mississippi State or Texas A&M, officially starting what the Gamecocks hope will be a nine-win tournament run between the conference and NCAA Tournaments. Once the calendar hits March, there is no more time for trying combinations, testing players out or finding a different formula.
At this stage it is what it is, and players are who they are. It might be enough for a National Championship, but it is not changing. The onus falls on players to step up in any situation, even a unique one that four months of basketball prior never presented.
“We all were excited for her,” Fulwiley said on Hall’s block. “For her to get the block, it was an exciting moment not only for her, but for the whole team. It pushed everyone to take it up a notch.”
Welcome to the postseason. Just like in-game Sunday, now it goes up a notch for real.
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