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Despite being the top overall seed, the lone women’s college basketball team undefeated, and a roster with depth, No. 1 South Carolina has seemingly flown under the radar throughout the NCAA tournament.
Perhaps that will change Sunday.
The Gamecocks have advanced to the national championship game, defeating No. 3 NC State 78-59 at the Final Four at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio.
South Carolina, now 37-0, will face either the No. 1 Iowa Hawkeyes, led by Caitlin Clark, or the No. 3 UConn Huskies, led by Paige Bueckers, in Sunday’s title game. Iowa and UConn are playing in the second semifinal, which is on ESPN.
South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso, who on Monday announced she would enter the WNBA draft, finished with 22 points, going 10-of-12 from the field, to go with 11 rebounds. The 6-foot-7-inch center started the game 6-for-6 from the field and scored the team’s first 10 points of the second quarter. She led all scorers with 16 in the first half.
There was cause of concern, however, with just over 2 minutes to go before halftime. Cardoso came up limping after attempting to drive to the basket and hobbled to the locker room with 1:39 left in the quarter. South Carolina took a 32-31 lead into the break.
But Cardoso would return for the start of the second half, and South Carolina came out firing, outscoring the Wolfpack 29-6 in the third quarter and ending the period on a 17-1 run.
By then, the game was out of reach at 61-37, and head coach Dawn Staley kept Cardoso on the bench for the fourth quarter.
“I mean, you play to your strengths,” Staley told reporters. “Kamilla is a strength of ours. She’s 6’7”. She’s agile. She can command the paint. She plays with a desire to win.”
Staley later said of Cardoso: “Greatness is a process. And she’s still very much in, I think, in the beginning stages of her greatness. I think you’ll see her play a lot better when she’s with pro players.”
Ashlyn Watkins pulled in 20 rebounds to go with eight points, while Raven Johnson had 13 points and five assists. Te-Hina Paopao added 10 points and six assists.
Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso shoots the ball against the NC State Wolfpack in the first half.
This has been an NCAA tournament full of star power, with Iowa’s Clark, UConn’s Bueckers, LSU’s Angel Reese and USC’s JuJu Watkins, just to name a few. Meanwhile, South Carolina just keeps winning.
South Carolina, now 108-3 in the last three seasons, is back in the national championship game for the first time since 2022, when it won the national title for the second time in program history. This is the Gamecocks’ fourth consecutive Final Four appearance and a chance for them to win their third national title in seven years.
For NC State, a dream season ends at 31-7. This was the Wolfpack’s second trip to the Final Four and the first since 1998.
Aziaha James led NC State with 20 points.
In the second semifinal, it’s seemingly all about Clark, though UConn’s Bueckers might disagree.
After a historic regular season, Clark has almost single-handedly propelled Iowa through March Madness, culminating with her 41-point performance against LSU in the Elite Eight.
Not only did that dominant outing banish some demons from last year’s title game, but it also cemented Clark’s status as the most dominant player in women’s college basketball at the moment with UConn Huskies coach Geno Auriemma saying, “We don’t plan on stopping her because I tried calling all the other coaches that have stopped her, and none of them answer the phone. So we’re going to have to find a different way to win than stopping Caitlin Clark.”
Only one final accolade remains for Clark before she presumably heads to the WNBA: to win a national championship.
After falling at the final hurdle last time around, the three-point specialist once again has an excellent chance to win that so-far elusive title – for both Iowa and herself – with just two games standing between her and college basketball’s most prestigious trophy.
“There’s still two more (games) there to get,” she said on Monday. “That’s what makes the Final Four so fun. Anybody can take it. Anybody can win it.
“I think we have the power to do that.”
Clark will take to the court in the Final Four against the Huskies, a team which she thought she was going to play for growing up.
Clark admitted last month that she idolized former UConn star Maya Moore and wanted to follow in her footsteps as a result.
“I wanted to be just like her. I thought I was going to go to UConn when I was growing up, but obviously, that’s not what happened,” Clark told reporters last month.
“Caitlin, obviously, is a tremendous player, generational player, but if Caitlin really wanted to come to UConn, she would have called me and said, ‘Coach, I really want to come to UConn,’” Auriemma said to reporters Tuesday.
“So I don’t think that either of us lost out. I think she made the best decision for her, and it’s worked out great. We made the decision we thought we needed to make,” he added.
“I try to lock into who fits with us, try to lock in on them early. That’s what happened with us and Paige. We felt really, really comfortable with that, and we went with it.”
Though the specter of what could have been hovers over the game, the Huskies are formidable in their quest for a record-extending 12th national championship with their own star guard.
Bueckers has been one of the standout players of March Madness so far, putting her team on her back during their run to a 23rd Final Four appearance.
The 22-year-old has been working her way back from a lost season last year due to a serious knee injury and has been hitting her stride as the tournament has progressed.
Steph Chambers/Getty Images
Bueckers and Nika Muhl hug after UConn’s victory over USC in the Elite Eight round.
She has played every minute of UConn’s last three games in March Madness, scoring 32, 24 and 28 points in an impressive run of performances.
Arguably her most impressive performance came in UConn’s Elite Eight clash with the No. 1 USC Trojans, when she finished with 28 points, 10 rebounds and six assists to qualify the Huskies for the semifinals.
Although she has already announced she will return to UConn next season rather than declare for the WNBA draft, Bueckers is one of the stars of the Final Four and will prove a tough obstacle for Iowa to overcome.
