March Madness: It’s Down To The Final Fours

When it was over, the combination of superior talent and creative resiliency put SC within a victory of the first major basketball national championship in the history of the school and the state.

USC outscored the Cardinal 42-24 in the second half to advance to Mississippi State on Sunday for the national championship.

“Coach Staley has a player’s mind”. Here’s what they had to say.

But South Carolina did not panic and stayed the course.

Staley and VanDerveer go way back, most notably to the 1990 Final Four when VanDerveer’s Stanford team posted a semifinal victory over Virginia, featuring sophomore guard Staley. SC scored 13 straight points to take a 39-33 lead. “I think people sleep on Allisha a lot because you never know when the beat may wake up”. With Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer seemingly anticipating every SC move, the Cardinal were able to win the second quarter 17-6 and take a highly unexpected 9 point lead into halftime.

Her catch-and-shoot three has been a given from the moment she arrived at Stanford, but Samuelson now finds herself among the nation’s best in virtually every offensive situation – spot-up, off screens, pick and roll ball handler, handoff, in transition.

When asked if she thinks Staley will use anything against her, VanDerveer said, “I hope she uses all those things that were bad things that I did”.

But she was off the court most of the second half, and even though Samuelson’s pleas to play were occasionally answered she was hampered by the injury.

It’s been fun to watch Gamecock adjustment tactics catch NCAA Tournament foes by surprise.

“Karlie with the ball is all good for me whenever she has it, wherever she has it”, VanDerveer said. “Those little things, they add up”. But that’s not all they like to do.

Take Smith’s game-winning basket against Notre Dame. It’s why we’re all here, keeping our eyes on if, let alone who, can finally take down the defending champion Connecticut Huskies.

No. 1 CT vs.

While Columbia, S.C., is this season’s center of college basketball with both teams in the NCAA Final Four, South Carolina Athletics thrives across its 21 sports. Everyone has extra incentive to try to take down the giant. She could have picked Tennessee, which had always been the premier team in the Southeastern Conference.

After a slow start, the Lady Gamecocks outlasted Stanford, led by SEC Player of the Year A’ja Wilson. But these Huskies have picked up where the others left off. I’m really proud of how we kept communicating. “And so really the opponent seems to have nothing to lose”.

South Carolina’s offense struggled to get any rhythm going in the first half and particularly in the second quarter. “We don’t have the best 1-on-1 players in the tournament”.

But if you’re the Gamecocks watching MSU defeat The Big Blue Menace last night, and you get to play the Bulldogs instead of the Huskies … don’t you have to feel like it’s meant to be? “For us, it is a brand new game”.

Mississippi State coachVic Schaefer previous year was showing the movie “Miracle” to his players and hoping for one. They also play such solid position defense and that makes them tough to score on.

“[It’s] just insane, it really is, we have had a police escort everywhere we go in Dallas and we got a swag bag from Nike and shoes from Kobe [Bryant] – so it’s been really cool”. The Bulldogs are playing in their first Final Four after beating Baylor in the Oklahoma City Regional. “We’ve been watching lots of film and scouting them, so we’ll be ready”.

“We were fortunate to be down nine”, Staley said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get another No. 1 player in the country, if she were not from our area”, Staley said.

The senior guard’s younger sister, Katie Lou, played for CT in the second semifinal game Friday in the home of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.