South Carolina Basketball: March Madness Preview

It’s been a tale of two seasons for the South Carolina basketball programs. On the women’s side of things, Dawn Staley and her team are a juggernaut looking to make history, while Lamont Paris’ men’s team is just starting a rebuild that has seen them lose more games than they have won.

South Carolina Women’s Basketball

For the women, not only is another national title a very realistic goal, but perfection has become a national talking point that surrounds the reigning national champions. Winning at this year’s Final Four would cement the Gamecocks in history, as only Tennessee, UConn, and Southern Cal have ever won back-to-back national titles. An undefeated season has only been attained by Tennessee, UConn, Baylor, and Texas.

Reaching just one of these goals, let alone both of them, will be arduous. However, the Gamecocks seem poised to claim their place among the all-time collegiate athletics immortals.

Reigning National Player of the Year Aliyah Boston (and most of the starting unit) has had a much lighter workload this season. Heading into their matchup with Tennessee, South Carolina has only played five games that finished with a single-digit scoring margin, and their season-long margin of victory sits at a remarkable 33.5 points per game. The sheer number of blowouts has lessened the number of minutes the starters have had to play, keeping them fresh for postseason play. The dominance also has allowed for the bench unit to get more game action than any other group of reserves in the country.

The Gamecocks are going to be the 1-seed in the Tournament this year, even if they were somehow to lose their remaining two regular season games and their first matchup in the SEC Tournament. As it stands, barring two improbable losses, they will be the number-1 overall seed, as well.

While it is true that NCAA Tournament time is called “March Madness” for good reason, and it is true that anything can happen within that madness, it is also true that this South Carolina basketball team is something special. In what would be a wire-to-wire number-1 ranking, the Gamecocks will get it done in March.

The scariest thing for the rest of the country? Because of the Covid-19 pandemic granting players an extra year of eligibility, Dawn Staley’s entire team could return to Columbia if they so chose. No one should expect Aliyah Boston to return as she will likely be the first pick in this year’s WNBA Draft, but the rest of the team could realistically return to dominate women’s college basketball once again. Maybe this time next year the sports world will be talking about a Gamecock three-peat.

South Carolina Men’s Basketball

The men’s basketball program will not be dancing this spring. Sure, there is still technically a path for Lamont Paris’ team to qualify for the Tournament, but it would require them to secure an automatic bid by winning five games in five days to become the SEC Tournament Champions. The Gamecocks have never accomplished this feat, and currently being 12th in the conference, doing so in 2023 seems, to be kind, outrageously unlikely.

So what can South Carolina basketball fans hope to see down the stretch of this season to offer some semblance of hope for the future? In a word: progress.

Progress is a cliche term in sports as it doesn’t have any clear meaning and gets thrown around about the majority of bad teams that get slightly less bad over time. However, with the roster turnover that Coach Paris inherited, the 2022-2023 version of South Carolina basketball was never in a position to be a good team. Progress is the only realistic hope for a team that has nine newcomers on its roster, a new coach leading them, and a fan base that has grown somewhat apathetic toward the men’s basketball program. Progress also seems to be realistic when considering the number of obstacles the team has had to overcome this season.

Progress looks different depending on the situation, but for the Gamecocks’ stretch run of 2023, it will look like competing. Competing seems like a minimal goal, but it is not something the team has done much of since conference play began. Thankfully for the fan base, the last two or three weeks have seen that begin to change. February has not seen the garnet and black lose by more than eleven points, and the Gamecocks have won two games against their peers at the bottom of the conference.

The inexperienced Gamecocks need to learn how to compete to learn how to win, so even this small amount of progress could pay off in the long run. It also should help shape the future as recruiting remains the lifeblood of college athletics. Recruits are much more likely to attend a school whose team is showing progress than one that has no future. With high school talent in the southeast being nearly at an all-time high, it’s more important now than ever before for the program to show growth. A rocky February for star freshman GG Jackson and Lamont Paris will not help matters, but the relationship seems to be on the mend, and Gamecock fans are hoping that the public perception of the situation will improve enough so as not to dissuade other local talents from staying home in Columbia.

As for this March, Gamecock men’s basketball fans, look to the future. It is (hopefully) a much happier basketball reality.