By Okon Ekpenyong, and On the Move with SportzKelzMedia

Joyce Edwards and Te-Hinda Paopao helped South Carolina advance to the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship to defend its title.

Texas Longhorns started strong, but the South Carolina Gamecocks had too many players making an impact on the floor, rallying to narrow the gap just before the end of the first quarter. Heading into the second half, the Gamecocks held a 38-35 advantage thanks to contributions from starters and bench players like Joyce Edwards, who scored 13 points and 11 rebounds to send South Carolina back to the title game on Sunday for the 2nd year in a roll.  

Coach Stanly praised Edwards for her toughness and coming through when the team needed it the most, and starter Te-Hina Paoao added 14 and praised Edwards for fighting those fears and continuing to stay present. 

For Paoao, who will play her last collegiate game on Sunday, “She was the floor leader this evening, maintaining everyone’s composure and demonstrating the tough leadership qualities that we always recognized in her,” says Staley. 

Texas needed to recognize that this was not TCU, where Hailey Van Lith was the sole scorer and Prince, the leading scorer for the team, was in foul trouble. On Stanley’s team, anyone can have an impacted game like Joyce Edwards, especially when Fulwiley had over twenty points against TCU and Sania Feagin both went 3-7; the coach could not substitute as she saw fit. 

Texas was able to force the Gamecocks into committing 14 turnovers, as they did against TCU, but they couldn’t convert into points.   
This marks the fourth matchup between these two teams, with South Carolina leading 3-1, including tonight’s win. Texas aims for redemption after losing the SEC conference tournament title game, which would have awarded the Longhorns their first SEC title since joining the conference in 2024.  

Coach Staley said when asked what separates her team from teams like Texas, having played them four times this season, “Both of our defenses are tough. We make it hard for us just to run our sets. We make it hard for them to run their sets. It comes down to depth, which is a part of our success.”

The games against Indiana, Maryland, and Duke were quite competitive, but in this one against Texas, the team didn’t need to rally in the final moments of the fourth quarter to move forward. South Carolina demonstrated their resolve not to allow such situations.

In the first quarter, when Texas took an early lead, the team swiftly made the necessary adjustments to keep the score tight and found ways to take the lead. When asked about their thoughts during Texas’s early scoring surge in the first quarter, the players responded:

JOYCE EDWARDS said that “they were resilient.” We’ve been through battles throughout the tournament with Duke, Maryland, and even Indiana. We just know how it’s going to be. We understand how competitive the tournament is going to be. And we know we have to be resilient. We can’t get too low on ourselves when we’re down, and we can’t get too high when we have a big lead. We have to keep going, and that’s it. TE-HINA PAOPAO added that Basketball is a game of runs. They went on their run. We went on our run, and we came up with the win. So I’m proud of our run.”

Whenever Texas attempted to stage a comeback, the Gamecocks consistently outplayed the Longhorns’ defense by employing various strategies to score. Notably, in the third quarter, they wrapped up that period with a score of 20-9, while Texas’s defense had difficulty managing the Gamecocks’ varied offensive capabilities. Kori Harmon and Southeastern Conference Player of the Year Madison Booker, who typically dominate the scoring, ended the game with eight and 11 points, respectively.

When questioned about what transpired in that third quarter, Harmon replied, “We only managed to score nine points, and they scored 20. So that’s essentially what went wrong. But we allowed their run to build up. That’s something we had discussed avoiding. So I believe it was just a rough quarter, similar to the last game. It was merely one quarter that we failed to put together.”

The team’s next matchup will be against either UCLA or UConn, as both teams have previously triumphed over South Carolina. This is Coach Staley’s 17th year at the university, and she is chasing her fourth championship since 2017, maintaining an undefeated record in the finals. 

When asked about her perfect record in national championships, Staley emphasizes that it doesn’t matter who her team faces on Sunday, whether it’s UCLA or UConn, and that previous encounters with both teams this season won’t benefit them unless specific adjustments are made from those games. “I believe that experiencing the game and observing how it unfolds is the only thing that will aid us,” Staley states.

Support the New Americans magazine to continue to serve our community with precise news that affects the new American, immigrant and refugee community. https://paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8LHFS78NRNJJY&source=url