ALBANY N.Y. — This was the mulligan, or at least it will have to serve as one.
South Carolina women’s basketball pushed itself to the brink of catastrophe on Saturday, letting a 22-point lead slip all the way down to two points in the final minute of its eventual 79-75 win over Indiana in the Sweet 16.
It would have been not just a bitterly disappointing end to an undefeated season, but one of the most confounding letdowns in South Carolina athletics history. This team, the one which tore through opponents for fun most of the year, set records and crushed all challengers, was going to let the whole thing go up in smoke because of 15 astoundingly uncharacteristic minutes?
It would have been the sore thumb on the resume, the one-word trigger for every Gamecock fan for the next decade to come. The term “Indiana” almost became a swear word in Columbia, and for most of the second half it looked like all the worst fears would be realized.
Raven Johnson said no, scoring six points in the final three minutes including sticking a dagger in Hoosier hearts on a 3-pointer with 53 seconds remaining.
“She had two big baskets,” Dawn Staley said about Johnson. “The three and then the mid-range shot in the lane, and then she made one of two free throws. A lot of that was her making big plays, instinctive plays that really good point guards do when they need to do it.”
How it even arrived at a point where South Carolina (35-0) required heroics is its own question, an onion the Gamecocks are fortunate they get another chance to peel back before taking on Oregon State Sunday at 1 p.m. ET.
Indiana (26-6) closed the third quarter on a 15-4 run, then held the Gamecocks off the scoreboard for almost four minutes opening the fourth. The well-oiled machine of South Carolina’s offense sputtered off road with two made field goals in a 10-minute stretch. Sydney Parrish shot the Hoosiers to the doorstep of history with four made 3-pointers in the second half to apply intense, hydraulic press-esque game pressure to the heavily favored Gamecocks.
Everything stopped working all at once, and South Carolina almost paid for its with its season.
“Offensively I think we were just a little stuck,” Bree Hall said. “Not getting the flow of things. But we're going to take note of that and change some things around.”
Hall’s last point is the most crucial of all: They can change things around.
Most teams who have the type of all-systems failure South Carolina did in the second half are not afforded an opportunity to course-correct or tweak the faults. Usually, it means a one-way ticket home.
Comparable feelings or moments nestled within Stlaey’s dynasty are few and far between, but one sticks out. In the second round of South Carolina’s eventual National Championship run in 2017, the Gamecocks met the cliff face against No. 8 seed Arizona State. A 28-4 team which earned a No. 1 seed almost met its end in the first weekend, at home no less, when the Sun Devils led inside the final two minutes and had a shot to force overtime before South Carolina side-stepped the landmine in a 71-68 win.
A 2022 Sweet 16 scrap against North Carolina did not feature the same jaw-dropping, startling encounter with elimination, but South Carolina did allow a 13-point lead to dwindle to four in the final minute before grinding out a win.
Both of those teams won National Championships after earthquake-type wobbling in an NCAA Tournament game, and there is no reason this one cannot join them.
“We made it to Sunday,” Te-Hina Paopao said. “We felt like that during the Tennessee game, and we all know what happened after the Tennessee game. I would say we went on a winning streak, but we've been winning all year. But our last couple games after Tennessee we played our best basketball, so hopefully we can play our best basketball in the next few days as well."
It was three games between second half near-collapses, with wins over LSU, Presbyterian and North Carolina following Tennessee.
Three is coincidentally what stands between the Gamecocks and a National Championship, the ultimate goal of this season so nearly frittered away against the Hoosiers.
But just as those 2017 Gamecocks had A’ja Wilson to put on her superman cape in crunch time and the 2022 squad had the ubiquitous Aliyah Boston to carry the load, this 2024 group might have found its crunch time superstar.
With all the chips in the center of the table, Johnson took over, practically willing her team over the finish line. It was an individual clutch performance stacking up with any in the increasingly long list within this program’s history,
“I knew she wasn't going to let us lose,” Staley said. “I knew she was going to do something.”
In the drive for immortality, every team is allowed one brush with mortality.
"We learn from our mistakes," Tessa Johnson said. "But obviously the next game is in two days so we have to move on from it fast.
Only one, though, and this group is now more aware of that reality than ever.
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