In last season’s SEC opener, an undefeated, top-ranked South Carolina women’s basketball team came out flat. It was sluggish, it never found its footing and ultimately it lost in a stunning upset against a Missouri team that did not even make the NCAA Tournament.

There were no such problems on Thursday night.

The No. 1 Gamecocks were chomping at the bit to get conference play going and thumped Texas A&M 76-34 at Colonial Life Arena. South Carolina (13-0, 1-0 SEC) went on a 17-2 run in the first quarter and never showed any signs of slowing down in a dominant performance against an overmatched Texas A&M (5-6, 0-1 SEC) squad. The win makes it the third time South Carolina has started 13-0 under Dawn Staley, but the first time since the 2015-16 season.

Zia Cooke scored 14 points, her fifth consecutive game reaching double-figures and the 11th time out of 13 games this season she has reached the mark. In particular after going through a lull where she did not make more than one 3-pointer in five consecutive games, she went 3-of-7 from beyond the arc for her third straight game with two or more triples.

In another stark contrast from the conference-opening defeat against the Tigers last season, South Carolina’s bench came up huge. Even with a full game plus overtime last year, the bench only managed to go five players deep and score 22 points. Tonight Staley was able to put NUMBER players in off her bench and they combined to wrack up 42 points. Talaysia Cooper actually led all players in points with her career-high 15 on 6-of-9 shooting. After only scoring more than five points once in her first eight college games, the freshman point guard has now scored at least nine in each of the last three contests.

Missouri last year also represented a very rare time where the lengthy Gamecocks did not win the defensive rebounding battle, dropping it 31-27 on that night. On Thursday night they corrected that and then some, grabbing nearly twice as many defensive boards as the Aggies with a 35-19 total. In the first quarter alone the Gamecocks won it 11-4, and added in six more offensive boards that led to 10 second-chance points on top of it. Those were the driving force behind the early run, building up a double-digit advantage before the first media timeout.

But for as dominant as things were for South Carolina, the performance did still leave a lot to be desired. Turnovers were a recurring problem for the Gamecocks through the first month of the season, and they showed up in bunches again after seemingly being curtailed lately. South Carolina turned the ball over 15 times, and also missed 13 free throws with a 16-of-29 performance from the charity stripe.

On the injury front, guard Bree Hall was the only player who did not appear in the game, and was seen with a walking boot on her foot pre-game.

The Gamecocks will hit the road in conference play for the first time on Monday night when they travel to Athens to take on Georgia.