Update: South Carolina announced Thursday morning that this game has been postponed and team activities have been paused.
South Carolina hosts a much-improved Georgia team Thursday night.
1. Big picture
I feel like after every game this season I’ve written something along the lines of, “They won, but here are the problems…” At times it has felt a bit like I’m being negative, but then Dawn Staley saints down in her postgame press conference and complains about all the things that went wrong. After the win over Alabama Staley explained why she has been so aggressive at finding faults.
“There’s no doubt we’re very capable,” she said. “When I say this, I’m not really concentrating on today. I’m looking at the big picture. We’ve got a tough stretch of our conference season coming up. We’ve got a game against UConn in February. We’ve got the SEC Tournament, and then hopefully on to the NCAA Tournament. We’re looking further down the line. We know that if we stay where we are today we’re exiting early out of the SEC Tournament and we won’t really get a chance to defend our regular season championship in the SEC. We’re looking down the line.”
2. Oh my, Zia!
Sophomore Zia Cooke is probably playing the best basketball of her career. She took the loss to NC State personally, repeatedly telling reporters she would make sure “it never happens again.”
Cooke hasn’t just been receptive to coaching, she has aggressively sought it out. Last year, after the first game of her career, Cooke found Staley in the hallway and asked when they could talk about Maryland. Nothing has changed. She reached out to Staley in the hours following the NC State loss to ask what she needed to do to be better.
In the four games since the loss, Cooke is averaging 21.5 points on 51.6% (32-62) shooting. She’s also 11-19 from three. For a player with a career shooting percentage under 40, she’s been remarkably efficient. The next step for Cooke is to play more consistent defense.
“Zia’s come into this season with a huge chip on her shoulder, not for any reason besides wanting to be the best. She’s extremely coachable. She wants to know the good, the bad, the ugly of her game,” Staley said. “She can score points. She can get to anywhere she wants to go on the floor. The complete part of Zia is (playing better defense).”
3. Still no Destiny
Destiny Littleton has returned to practice, but Staley does not expect her to play Thursday. If Littleton doesn’t play, it will be the third game she has missed in a row. In the first game, Olivia Thompson got four minutes of playing time off the bench, and Eniya Russell played a minute. Against Alabama, Staley tightened the rotation and neither Thompson or Russell got in the game until the final couple of minutes when the outcome was certain.
4. Scouting the Bulldogs
Georgia split its first two conference games, losing a narrow 69-62 game to Mississippi State and then blowing out Auburn 76-44. Georgia has won 14 of its last 18 games, with the losses coming to Mississippi State, Texas A&M, Kentucky, and South Carolina, all top-15 teams when they played. This isn’t the same Georgia team that South Carolina faced in Athens last season, when Staley was so confident in a win she decided to see what would happen if she turned Aliyah Boston into a three-point shooter.
The Bulldogs haven’t cracked the top 25, but like the Crimson Tide, they probably should have. The Bulldogs were 16th in the first NET rankings, and have played one of the toughest schedules in the SEC. A year ago Joni Taylor seemed like she might be on the hot seat, but patience was rewarded. Injured players got healthy, young players matured, and the Bulldogs finally look like the team Taylor has been trying to assemble.
“Georgia is much improved. They always play hard, but they are playing hard and I think they are as healthy as they’ve been in a few years. Their speed, their ability to get up and down the floor and play fast in transition could put us back on our heels if we’re not getting back. We do want to rebound the basketball, but for those players that aren’t going to rebound they need to get back and set up our transition defense.
5. SEC! - SEC!
I changed the order today because Georgia is emblematic of this: The SEC is stronger top to bottom than it has been in years. The SEC has been an elite conference for a long time, but for the past 6-7 years it has been pretty top-heavy with South Carolina and Mississippi State. This year it is really deep (and doing so with a pretty average Tennessee team). Under Mike Neighbors Arkansas has gone from bottom four in the league to top-15 in the country. Kentucky weathered a rough stretch a few seasons ago and is back in the top 15. Georgia and Alabama are legit tournament teams. Ole Miss is clearly on the rise. Even the “bottom” of the conference has proven itself capable of winning: LSU had a terrible non-conference season but is 2-0. Missouri nearly knocked off Arkansas.
RealTimeRPI.com rates the SEC as the second best conference in the country, behind the ACC. South Carolina’s road win over Alabama vaulted the Gamecocks to the top spot in the RPI (the NCAA no longer uses the RPI, but nobody has started doing “Real Time NET” yet). South Carolina plays a losable game almost every week, if not twice, this season. It will be hard to go undefeated in the league again, but it also means almost every game is a boost to the resume, which will help the Gamecocks snag a number one seed. It’s really too bad, especially for a team like Georgia, that there won’t be many fans along for the ride.
The Ws
Who: #5 South Carolina (7-1, 2-0) vs Georgia (9-1, 1-1)
When: Thursday, January 7, 7:00 pm
Where: Colonial Life Arena
Watch: SEC Network+
