South Carolina Coach Daybreak Staley was actually dressed for a giant sport on Sunday.
Staley, who’s from North Philadelphia and is making an attempt to guide South Carolina to a second straight girls’s basketball championship this season, dipped into her assortment of Eagles gear and wore a throwback white-and-green Randall Cunningham No. 12 jersey as she paced the sideline throughout her workforce’s massive showdown in opposition to Louisiana State.
The matchup, between the final two unbeaten groups in girls’s school hoops, performed out within the hours earlier than the Tremendous Bowl, giving the game its newest marquee second for a season during which a number of contenders are hoping to topple Staley’s juggernaut program.
Prime-ranked South Carolina is looking for to pile up wins (and titles). Louisiana State is trying to be part of the higher echelon of the game. The Tigers, ranked No. 3 coming into the sport, have been surpassing expectations behind their coach, Kim Mulkey, who joined this system in 2021 after main Baylor to 3 nationwide championships.
On Sunday, it was South Carolina that handed the take a look at with an 88-64 victory in Columbia, S.C., working away from L.S.U. within the second half and, maybe, asserting a tiny bit extra separation between itself and the remainder of the game.
“We don’t wish to lose, and we actually don’t wish to lose in our constructing,” Staley mentioned on the ESPN broadcast after the sport. She added: “Our gamers are pushed, they’re pushed. They’re aggressive. They wish to win in any respect prices, and so they wish to do it for one another.”
Staley and her gamers are piling up numbers that mirror their need for excellence. The Gamecocks are 118-8 over the previous 4 seasons, and have now gained 40 straight regular-season video games. They’ve gained 16 straight regular-season video games in opposition to opponents ranked within the Related Press Prime 25 ballot — together with a win over Connecticut on Feb. 5 that was a rematch of their nationwide championship sport final season. South Carolina’s final loss got here almost a yr in the past, to Kentucky within the Southeastern Convention match championship sport.
Its sport in opposition to L.S.U. featured a matchup of two massive gamers in competition for nationwide participant of the yr honors — South Carolina ahead Aliyah Boston (averaging 13.4 factors and 9.9 rebounds), who’s the reigning nationwide participant of the yr, and L.S.U. ahead Angel Reese (averaging 23.2 factors and 15.3 rebounds).
South Carolina (25-0) had the sting in expertise. 4 of its starters, together with Boston, performed within the nationwide championship sport final season, whereas L.S.U. (23-1) options 4 new starters.
Reese picked up two early fouls and was relegated to the bench. South Carolina raced out to an 18-2 lead whereas sending wave after wave of attacking gamers into the sport.
“They jumped on us just like the defending nationwide champions ought to, and it began on the tip,” Mulkey mentioned at halftime, when L.S.U. had lower the deficit to 10.
L.S.U. received inside 5 factors within the third quarter, however South Carolina pulled away on a run that was capped by a 3-pointer from guard Brea Beal, which triggered a celebration on the South Carolina bench that spilled onto the ground throughout the break.
Kamilla Cardoso, a 6-foot-7 Brazilian, was unstoppable down low with 18 factors and 13 rebounds for South Carolina. The senior guard Zia Cooke scored 17 factors, and Boston, the projected No. 1 choose on this yr’s W.N.B.A. draft, had 14 factors, 9 rebounds and three blocks.
Led by Cardoso and Boston, South Carolina dominated inside in scoring and rebounding.
The win retains the Gamecocks in prime place earlier than the ladies’s N.C.A.A. match. On Thursday, South Carolina was projected because the No. 1 general seed by the N.C.A.A. Division I Girls’s Basketball Committee, giving it essentially the most favorable path attainable.
Pat Lowry, who oversees the manufacturing of girls’s school basketball throughout ESPN’s networks, realized a few months in the past that the South Carolina-L.S.U. sport may find yourself going head-to-head with Fox’s daylong lead-up of programming for the Tremendous Bowl. On ESPN, South Carolina-L.S.U. adopted “Postseason NFL Countdown” and aired earlier than a cornhole match.
“I don’t assume we anticipated this being two undefeated groups when the schedule was decided,” Lowry mentioned in an e mail within the week main as much as the sport. “However the sport time and community for the sport appears like a improbable alternative, particularly with the lead-in programming.”
She added: “I feel for girls’s basketball followers, there’s large curiosity on this sport and really seeing how good L.S.U. is in opposition to a terrific workforce. A sport like that is appointment viewing for a girls’s basketball fan.”
Staley, who has been making the case for the game itself whereas she piles up wins, appreciated the importance of the sport forward of the tip.
“It’s tremendous cool that we are able to spotlight our convention as a result of we’ve accomplished some unbelievable issues,” Staley, who has gained three Olympic gold medals as a participant and two N.C.A.A. championships as a coach, advised reporters earlier than the sport. “This convention prepares you for moments like this, it prepares you to win nationwide championships, it prepares you to do a number of various things due to the competitors that brews each evening, and it builds to this second, so it’s cool.”
On Sunday, the day belonged to South Carolina, and, sadly for Staley, Kansas Metropolis relatively than Philadelphia within the Tremendous Bowl.
“The Eagles have already gained, it’s divine order. Jalen Hurts, it’s divine order,” Staley mused earlier than her personal sport, after having chosen from her many choices of Eagles gear, which included jerseys of the quarterback Hurts (with whom she has traded messages of mutual admiration) in addition to the previous stars Brian Dawkins and Reggie White.
She occurred to be fallacious about her Tremendous Bowl prediction, however her workforce stayed on its roll.