Call it a way to save space or a coincidence, but there is one distinct pattern in the banners hanging from the rafters above the side of Colonial Life Arena opposite the benches.
You see eight lined up in a row. Seven commemorating SEC regular season championships — one for each — and then one banner tacked on the end with all the SEC Tournament titles crammed into one piece of cloth.
Make some more room.
No. 1 South Carolina women’s basketball wrapped up its eighth regular season conference championship in 11 years with a 72-44 victory over Alabama. It is a staggering stat, even with how normal the celebrations have become in Columbia.
A program with zero conference titles prior to the 2013-14 season now has more than every other team in the league except Tennessee.
National Championships are the goal, and one South Carolina (26-0, 13-0 SEC) is more than within its rights to expect this year. Final Fours are program markers, status symbols of excellence and consistency to reach the ending destination of any given season. Conference tournament titles are unique. You cut a net, you get another ring, you get a taste of postseason action before the real thing.
But lost in the shuffle of everything a college basketball team can accomplish, there is the regular season title. The one which takes the longest to win, and requires the steadiest hand to attain. Even an NCAA Tournament run is only six games. A regular season title means coming out on top over 16 contests, finishing at the front of a 14-team pack.
There is a reason South Carolina chooses to mark each one individually, unlike its conference tournament triumphs.
“If there’s a championship out there, we want to win,” Staley said. “It’s great, it really is great that this team has put us in this position this early. And I say early into the regular season, because it usually takes probably the last game. You’re jockeying for position; you’re looking over your shoulder. And they made it clear.”
These Gamecocks — actually picked to finish second place pre-season, strange as it is to remember now — accepted a trophy from league commissioner Greg Sankey with three games to spare.
It is easy to feel like this is old news, played out or a “bigger fish to fry” type of night. Staley herself, even through the excitement, did not wear her championship hat into the post-game press conference like her players.
When winning becomes habitual, winning feelings do as well.
But for the "old" guard, this was new. Te-Hina Paopao is the most experienced player on the roster as a senior transfer from Oregon, but got her first taste of what a championship celebration can feel like as a senior. Sakima Walker had to play increased minutes with Kamilla Cardoso taking the night off, and she also won her first team accolade as a Gamecock.
Bree Hall has been a part of three regular season titles, but never one where she started every single game on the way. She scored the first two buckets of a sloppy first quarter and finished her night 6-of-9 shooting with 13 points.
“It’s honestly a little different this time just knowing that I am more of a factor to it,” Hall said. “I feel like previous years I wasn’t really that main factor, so I didn’t really feel like, ‘Oh, I’m really getting this.’ But now to go out there, and starting and really being a factor to the team, it just helps a lot.”
She has done this before, but she also has not. Same for Cardoso, Ashlyn Watkins, Raven Johnson and Chloe Kitts, all bench players on last season’s team who have soaked up starting minutes for the latest championship team. Taking what they learned from the most successful recruiting class in program history and adapting it into their own futures, something even they will admit took some soul-searching over the summer.
It is easy to become desensitized to it.
Until you remember five SEC programs have never won a regular season title, and two more have only done it once, and it opens a new perspective.
Half of the league has spent the better part of 40 years chasing or only winning one of what South Carolina now has eight of. The Gamecocks have long since graduated from any kind of underdog or surprise status, but the scale of this feat stands up.
A team of five new starters, five new players overall and two new assistant coaches did it again. Did it with almost a quarter of the conference schedule in their back pockets. Did it two games faster than even last year's team.
Did it with conviction.
“It was a new team,” Watkins said. “Of course you expect the unexpected. We lost seven people, that’s a lot of people to lose especially off a good team that we had. We didn’t expect to be this good, but once we saw we were this good, we never looked back.”
It will be number eight in the rafters, but the first one quite like this.
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