Unbeaten Gamecocks survive OT at Ole Miss
OXFORD, Miss. — Pushed to the brink Sunday evening, Zia Cooke and the rest of the South Carolina women’s basketball team finally exerted control once the game went into overtime.
Cooke scored five of her 24 points in the extra five-minute period to help the No. 1 Gamecocks remain unbeaten with a 64-57 Southeastern Conference victory at Ole Miss.
The Gamecocks (27-0, 14-0), the winners of last year’s NCAA tournament, got one of their biggest scares of the season before winning for the 33rd straight game. The Rebels (20-7, 9-5) never trailed by more than six points in regulation and flirted with their first win over a No. 1 team in 46 years.
“They were locked in,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said. “They played their zone and were committed to it, and we didn’t handle it well until we actually had to. So it was a good game plan.”
She called the Rebels “an NCAA tournament team,” and they certainly looked the part.
Cooke had six rebounds and four assists to help offset a 7-of-18 shooting performance. Aliyah Boston added 13 points and 11 rebounds on 4-of-14 shooting and didn’t score in the first quarter.
The deep Gamecocks didn’t get their usual supply of scoring help for the two stars, though Kamilla Cardoso had eight points and 11 rebounds.
Angel Baker led Ole Miss with 17 points, Snudda Collins added 11, Marquesha Davis had nine with seven rebounds and Rita Igbokwe blocked six shots.
Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin began her postgame news conference with a big sigh.
“Tough one. Man, today was an incredibly emotional game for me, our players, everybody,” she said. “I just grew up looking up to Dawn Staley. I just have so much respect for her as a person. She has become a mentor of mine.
“To be able to take them into overtime and have an opportunity to win after being our third game of the week was incredible.”
The Rebels have lost 17 in a row to the Gamecocks.
This was only the third single-digit margin and second overtime game of the season for the reigning national champions, who had been winning by an average of 33.5 points. The first two singlemargin victories came against No. 3 Stanford (76-71 in overtime) and No. 6 Connecticut (81-77). South Carolina dominated overtime in Oxford, 9-2.
Cooke’s second basket of the extra frame matched South Carolina’s biggest lead to that point, 63-57, with 1:33 left. The teams swapped turnovers, but Ole Miss missed three shots trying to stay alive, including two straight 3-point tries by Baker after offensive rebounds.
Cooke, who had scored South Carolina’s first eight points of the game, then made one of two foul shots.
Ole Miss had rallied from a six-point deficit over the final seven minutes to force bonus basketball.
Baker had a steal and a layup, and then she gave Ole Miss its first lead since the opening minutes with a jumper to go up 55-54 with 1:20 left. Igbokwe then blocked two shots by Boston to preserve the edge.
With 30 seconds left, Boston made one of two free throws to tie it up. Ole Miss turned the ball over without getting a shot off, and Boston couldn’t make one at the buzzer as South Carolina finished regulation on a 1-of-11 slump.
South Carolina shot only 23-of-61 (37.7%) for the game but outrebounded the Rebels 49-36 — and the nation’s top scoring defense put the clamps on in overtime.
“I thought we just were calculating in where we wanted the ball to go,” Staley said, “and our posts came through.”
Ole Miss has come a long way since McPheeMcCuin remembers about 500 fans (officially, 1,225) on hand for her first time hosting Staley’s Gamecocks. It was an 87-32 South Carolina win, but the score was 32-2 at halftime.
“Nobody was in the Pavilion, and the only reason I remember is because I was embarrassed, because I looked up to Dawn,” the Rebels coach said. “And I know she built something, and I’m trying to build something.
“And today to hear the fans, they were so engaged and they almost took us to the ‘W.’”