After winning the first round 67-50, South Carolina women’s basketball has a rematch with Texas.
The No. 2 Gamecocks (22-1, 10-0 SEC) travel to Moody Center in Austin for the second game of the home and home series with the No. 6 Longhorns (23-2, 9-1) on Sunday (2 p.m ET, ESPN).
Texas is riding a seven-game win streak, having not lost since the first time it faced coach Dawn Staley‘s squad on Jan. 12 and South Carolina has won 17 straight.
Here’s what to know about Texas ahead of Sunday’s rematch:
Madison Booker, the star sophomore for Texas, had what Staley said was just a bad game on Jan 12. She was leading the Longhorns with a 14.9-point scoring average but finished 3-of-19 from the field and scored just seven points.
A large part of that was senior guard Bree Hall forcing her into tough shots and locking her down on defense, but Booker did miss a fair amount of open looks. Since that game, she’s scored over 12 points every game, including two games with 26 or more.
She’s now averaging 16.3 points and 6.4 rebounds per game.
“You got to make her uncomfortable, you got to make her think about second guessing some shots,” Staley said of Booker. “You just got to break up the cadence and disrupt the flow of how she wants to play the game because if you allow her to just go at the speed she likes to go at … she’s going to beat you every time.”
The Gamecocks are the only team with a perfect conference record. There are three teams with only one SEC loss: Texas, LSU and Kentucky. South Carolina plays Kentucky on March 2.
Staley said it’s been discussed how important these late SEC wins are, especially to a team like Texas that sits behind them in the standings.
“This is for us controlling our own destiny versus looking back and saying, ‘We wish this person loses, we wish that person loses,'” Staley said. “We got to win, we got to win to not worry about all the other stuff if you lose.”
South Carolina got destroyed on the boards in the first half against Texas, as the Longhorns grabbed 10 offensive rebounds just five minutes into the game. The Gamecocks cleaned things up to finish with 42 rebounds to Texas’ 40.
South Carolina is No. 12 in the country, averaging 42.91 rebounds per game, and Texas is No. 41 averaging 40.24.
It’s a point of emphasis for both teams to eliminate each other’s second-chance rebounds, and South Carolina can’t let the Longhorns get as many second chance shots as they did the first time.
The SEC injury report will be released on Saturday night but as of Friday:
South Carolina
Texas
South Carolina 76, Texas A&M 65: The Longhorns and Booker shoot better but South Carolina’s depth prevails.
Lulu Kesin covers South Carolina athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email her at lkesin@gannett.com and follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @Lulukesin
