GREENVILLE, S.C. — Lightning did not strike twice in the SEC Championship Game.

Exactly 364 days ago South Carolina took a 55-43 lead into the fourth quarter of the conference championship game before letting it slip in an overtime loss to Kentucky.

On Sunday afternoon against Tennessee it was 55-42 going to the final quarter, and that’s where the similarities ended.

The Gamecocks corrected the wrong from last year, handling business down the stretch to win 74-58, their seventh SEC Championship in the last nine seasons. And they did it in the only way they could, with three superstars from the senior class carrying the load.

Aliyah Boston ripped off 10 points before the first media timeout on the way to scoring 18. Zia Cooke missed her first four shots from the field in what looked like another one of her off shooting performances, but immediately heated up with 10 points in less than five minutes to get her day going. She ended up with a game-high 24 points helping to handle ball-handling duties off-and-on throughout the game with Kierra Fletcher out with a left ankle injury.

And Brea Beal, steady and poised as ever with the lights on, came out as the facilitator her team needed without its starting point guard, dishing off five assists in the first six minutes of the game.

South Carolina (32-0) led from wire-to-wire after Boston’s hot start, taking a double-digit lead late in the first quarter on a Cooke 3-pointer. A 12-0 run after Tennessee momentarily tied the game threatened to turn the weekend finale into another romp, but Tennessee (23-11) — fresh off a 17-point comeback in the semifinal against LSU — would not go away. The Lady Vols cut it to six going into halftime behind Jordan Horston’s 14 first half points, frequently finding matchups for her to take advantage of inside.

But the saying is defense wins championships, and the defense adjusted at halftime.

Horston did not score a point in the third quarter and her team only scored 11 as South Carolina assumed control. Beal was her usual menacing self defensively. Cooke was active with her hands, turning one poke into an easy transition bucket.

And slowly but surely, the best team in the nation did what it always does. It squeezed the life out of its opponent. It used depth to overpower an exhausted opposing bench unit.

It won a championship.

Cooke delivered the dagger with a late 3-pointer that made it a 17-point game, enough to get even the always laser-focused Dawn Staley to deliver two monstrous fist pumps standing up on the sideline in front of her bench.

In that moment, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt there was not going to be any repeat of last year.

Not in the SEC Tournament at least.