It took the better part of three quarters for anything to come easy in No. 1 South Carolina women’s basketball’s first SEC home game of the 2023-24 season.
Some of that was self-inflicted; the Gamecocks missed 20 layups. Some of it was due to crafty Mississippi State guard Jerkaila Jordan’s 25 points.
But the Gamecocks pushed through, eventually overwhelming an opponent without enough depth to keep up. South Carolina took out Mississippi State 85-66 at Colonial Life Arena, a game it trailed for most of the first quarter but also never presented serious danger of losing.
For a team which has “shot itself out of a cannon” on several occasions as Dawn Staley has described it, Sunday was more of a methodical burn. Mississippi State (13-4, 0-2 SEC) led by five early and maintained it for most of the quarter thanks to a sizable advantage in the paint. In what has become a little bit of an eyebrow-raising trend for South Carolina (14-0, 2-0 SEC), guards were able to attack the basket on dribble drives and score at the rim.
Jordan attacked the basket plenty, and Lauren Park-Lane also found more than her fair share of creases with 14 points. A South Carolina team which entered the game giving up just 21.4 points per game in the paint surrendered 16 in the first quarter alone and blew past that average before halftime, with the final total settling at 40.
It took a spurt with a mostly bench-laden lineup on the court to stem the tide. A strong Tessa Johnson baseline drive and layup kickstarted a 7-0 run in less than a minute, forcing a quick Sam Purcell timeout.
The six minutes and change Mississippi State held the lead made up the only time it held the advantage.
A quick spurt for Chloe Kitts with six points in less than two minutes ballooned the lead to double-digits and forced yet another Purcell timeout, the type of run South Carolina needed to finally sustain some momentum. Kitts scored 12 points on 10 shots on an afternoon where she combined with Kamilla Cardoso and Ashlyn Watkins to score 34 points and secure 28 rebounds, but it was far from that straightforward for South Carolina’s frontcourt.
Layups clunked and clanked all afternoon. A physical Mississippi State frontcourt made life difficult even without ever clawing back into it on the scoreboard. The Bulldogs actually stayed within 10 points deep into the third quarter, but the wheels completely fell off for an injured, overmatched opponent playing with just nine scholarship players available.
South Carolina closed the third quarter and opened the fourth on a 20-5 run to completely kill off the upset bid, triggered by back-to-back Bree Hall 3-pointers, the two biggest shots of her 15-point performance.
The undefeated Gamecocks will return to Missouri — the site of their last SEC regular season loss over two calendar years ago — on Thursday night.
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