The lobby at Westin-Vendome Hotel has enough to remind you where you are.

Fancy, elaborate mosaics dot the ground. Detailed light fixtures every few feet and accompanying art from landmarks around Paris are scattered across the spacious area. Windows on either side reveal the bumper-to-bumper traffic and centuries-old architecture symbolic of the French capital.

On Monday afternoon, Nov. 6, at around 4:00 p.m. local time, sights and sounds of a different variety drowned out indicators of the Parisian aesthetic. A crammed-in, boisterous contingent of garnet and black sent South Carolina women's basketball off onto the bus before an away game.

A wholly typical scene in the most atypical circumstance imaginable.

"That made me feel so good," MiLaysia Fulwiley's mom Phelliccia Mixon told GamecockScoop. "Knowing that she doesn't just have me and a couple people that know her, she has a whole village behind her. People that don't even know her past or her story, they just love her as a player and they came so far to support her. Walking into that gym and seeing all those Gamecock fans brought tears to my eyes."

Mixon had plenty of company to bask in the emotions.

The first college basketball game ever played in Paris ended in a 100-71 victory for South Carolina women's basketball over Notre Dame. For all the shockwaves a 29-point win over a top-10 opponent echoed around the sports world, the final score was a routine piece of the puzzle for the traveling party.

It was a one-in-a-lifetime experience in every sense of the phrase for the players, coaches and staff. For many, it was their first taste of international soil. And then there were the parents, a lucky few who crossed the Atlantic and soaked in the joy.

"Full circle" is nearly cliche as a descriptor, but in some moments, it is impossible to ignore.

Early morning practices, long travel weekends and the grind of a recruiting cycle flood back to mind while standing in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Sentimentalism creeps in on everyone eventually.

"My emotions were just all over the place," Ashlyn Watkins' mom Harriet told GamecockScoop. "Because I was just thinking, this is just a little girl, second grade, asking me to let her play basketball for fun. And then all of the sudden, she's in Paris playing basketball? It's just an amazing feeling."

Every path to college basketball is unique, diverging sequences of ups and downs that make it all the more enjoyable when they eventually converge on one tight-knit team. Just within South Carolina's 11-player roster alone, you find the details of no two players ever taking the same route to Columbia.

There is Sakima Walker, a JUCO transfer from Northwest Florida State College. Chloe Kitts, who took a gamble as an early enrollee in the middle of what should have been her senior year of high school last season, is now in the starting lineup. Te-Hina Paopao was an experienced transfer from 3,000 miles away after a successful stint at Oregon. Watkins and Fulwiley, the key underclassmen, arrived from high schools just quick car jaunts from Colonial Life Arena.

Everyone found their route, which meant their parents shepherded them through whatever pitfalls developmental basketball offered.

"AAU, that was the main thing," Sania Feagin's mom Sherri told GamecockScoop. "Every weekend. There wasn't any time to do anything else. And her brother played too, so two of them were playing AAU basketball at the same time."

Never — not in one long AAU weekend from their Ellenwood, Ga. home or a hundred — did Sherri or her husband Charles conceive of ending up with passport stamps to watch their daughter play basketball.

"Not in our wildest dreams," Charles told GamecockScoop. "But this has been a blessing for her to attend South Carolina and for us to be able to come here and see the South Carolina Gamecocks and have practices, and even tour France. It's our first time here as well. It's just been a pleasure to be here, and without her we wouldn't be here."

There was a similar sentiment from the Watkins household, where her youth career was a grind from the first day she asked to play as a second-grader to her debut last season. A combination of pride in the moment and gratitude for the opportunity, a two-way street between the player and parent.

"I thought AAU was something when she was traveling all over the face of AAU," Watkins said. "And then her college career took us to Paris, I'm like oh god. Had she not been playing basketball, I probably would have never gone there."

Fulwiley's journey looks almost too simple from the outside. A phenomenally talented guard dazzles everyone from her middle school days, receives an offer from the local powerhouse and attends school there.

Dawn Staley offered Fulwiley a scholarship when she was a seventh-grader. Mixon remembers taking her daughter to a game at Colonial Life Arena in 2016, where she was the only member of the family who did not turn around for a photo. Too locked in on the action, even then.

Reality does not align with perception, though, especially not in this case.

"I remember when she was young she said she wanted to play for a real team, and this is definitely a real team," Mixon said. "During her career in AAU I had to change a couple jobs, I had to make some sacrifices with my timing and my schedule just to basically be there for her and support her dream, and this is one of her dreams. I had to make sure as a mother I could help her get to where she wanted to be."

And then the behind-the-back layup quite literally heard around the world. In game, it was the moment everything crescendoed on the court as the loudest possible opening statement for a college career.

Just like Fulwiley's layup was a combination of several carefully crafted moves, so was getting in a position to watch it.

Dribble, drive, behind-the-back, layup, score.

Sacrifices, AAU trips, changing jobs, flight to Paris, liftoff.

Two sides of the same story, an entire captivated audience of basketball fans read for the first time Monday.

"It was surreal," Mixon said. "It was like deja vu to me. I've seen it before because she's done it so much, it was like a feeling that I already had before, but now for everybody to know. When I saw MiLaysia, I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I can't' believe you did that during the game.'

"I closed my eyes and before I knew it, I saw the ball dropped in there."

Feeling like Paris was a triumphant conclusion to these journeys is natural. There will be more games, but not of such historical significance in an untapped setting. This roster blew out another top-15 opponent six days later, but you only get one first game together. Wherever this South Carolina season leads between now and the Apr. 7 National Championship Game, any possible future chapters to the story will stem from Paris of all places.

"This was different that two American teams went over there," Raven Johnson's mom Shekia told GamecockScoop. "They got to see the Mona Lisa, they got to do a lot of things that a lot of kids that play on basketball teams will never do."

Whether the NCAA decides to play one, five or a hundred women's basketball games in Europe in the future, this collection of South Carolina players — and their parents — were involved in the icebreaker.

And no matter where they came from or what the journey, those emotions and trip memories will last a lifetime.

"I just thought it was an awesome experience to see your kid basically doing something that no other team has done," Johnson said. "They're trendsetters now."