What rust?

After a full week without a game during final exams break, South Carolina women’s basketball stormed out of the tunnel, dropped 15 points on South Florida before the game was even four minutes old, and controlled the afternoon for a 78-62 home win.

South Carolina (10-1) scored on six of its first seven possessions, getting a pair of Te-Hina Paopao 3-pointers, one from Bree Hall plus three scores inside to set the tone early and force South Carolina (5-6) to play from behind the entire way.

"It's just saying ready," Sania Feagin said about coming off the break. "We went out there and did what we had to do. We've been playing hard, strong and competitive [in practice] this whole week."

But after faceplanting out of the blocks, an experienced Bulls team re-gathered, and basically played an even remainder of the half. South Florida only went into the locker room trailing by a dozen after going down by as many as 14 in the first six minutes, and trimmed the lead as low as seven with just over three minutes remaining in the second quarter. USF also did what nearly nobody does to the almighty Gamecocks, causing legitimate, sustained problems on the glass. The Bulls finished with 17 offensive rebounds and stayed neck-and-neck in rebounding the entire way, only losing the overall battle 35-34.

The rebounding troubles reached their zenith in the final minute of the third quarter when the Bulls secured two offensive rebounds on the same possession, finally converted a third attempt and a frustrated Dawn Staley slammed her trademark rolled up notes on the scorer’s table.

"We were undisciplined," Staley said. "We started reaching, we started gambling. Once we got back to our disciplined style of play, we can create our own momentum."

For all the imperfections, though, this was still a largely dominant performance. Feagin scored a season-high 14 points and Joyce Edwards had a career-high 15 as South Carolina spent all afternoon finding whatever it wanted on the interior, covering up for a day where the offense hit just two two 3-pointers after the initial flurry.

Feagin, Edwards, Ashlyn Watkins and Chloe Kitts combined to score 49 points, and the team had 46 in the paint. Even layups, a serious scourge for this team at times in the first 10 games of the season, were dropping. South Carolina went 18-of-26 on layups, a 69.2 percent clip which represented its high-water mark of the campaign.

"We've been really intentional about getting them the ball," Staley said. "I think early in the season we were guard-heavy in what we were doing and the amount of shots we were taking. We weren't getting them as many looks as we needed to give them, so we've been working on being intentional about getting them the ball."

Heading into the game, the Gamecocks were at 57.3 percent for the season on layups and only finished two games, Coppin State and Iowa State, over 65 percent. On an afternoon where rebounding was suspect, outside shots dried up and defense was lackluster at times, getting back to basics prevented an uncomfortable fourth quarter

"It makes life easier," Staley said. "I think if we didn't make as many layups today at a pretty efficient clip, they could have made it interesting."

Just one game stands between South Carolina — now winners of five straight — and the Christmas break and only two more before SEC play, both at home. The Gamecocks will host Charleston Southern on Thursday before a 10-day gap in the schedule and a home contest against Wofford to round out 2024.

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