Stanford survives South Carolina, advances to national championship game
South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston stole the ball with five seconds left, and Brea Beal sprinted to the other end but couldn’t finish a layup with one second remaining. Boston tried to put back the miss, but it bounced off the back of the iron.
The Cardinal advanced to the NCAA tournament final with a 66-65 win over South Carolina and will play in the national championship game for the first time since 2010. Its last title came in 1992. Stanford will face Arizona at 6 p.m. Sunday. The Wildcats upset Connecticut in the other semifinal.
“It’s surreal. I don’t think it’s really hit me yet,” Jones said. “Everybody growing up, you wish to go to the national championship, play on the biggest stage in front of the biggest crowd against the best team. We know whoever comes out with a [win] tonight is going to be great competition for us on Sunday. We’re just kind of moving on. We’re excited. It’s surreal.”
Teams across the country all had different challenges trying to play a basketball season in the midst of a pandemic, but top-seeded Stanford had a bit more adversity than most. The Cardinal was on the road for nine weeks from December to February as Santa Clara County (Calif.) prohibited all contact sports. Life on the road for the majority of the season clearly didn’t have any lasting effects for the Cardinal.
Lexie Hull finished with 18 points, 13 rebounds and four assists for Stanford.
Zia Cooke paced South Carolina with 25 points, Destanni Henderson chipped in 18 points, and Boston finished with 11 points and 16 rebounds.
“This is one of those survive and advance,” said Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer, who became the winningest coach in NCAA women’s basketball history this season. “It was not a pretty game for us, but that’s credit to USC — South Carolina, how aggressive they are, how athletic they are. We’re going to have to learn from it and play better.
“It was a battle. … We did not play a great game tonight.”
Stanford took a 31-25 lead into halftime after a bruising first half in which neither offense found any flow because of stifling defense by both teams. The Cardinal shot just 34.4 percent in the opening 20 minutes, but that was better than South Carolina’s 27.6 percent. Attempts to score inside were futile as weak layups were tossed aside. Stanford had six blocks in the first half, and South Carolina had five.
South Carolina sprinted out to an 11-2 lead thanks to a pair of buckets by Cooke and a corner three-pointer from Boston, a first team all-American. The 6-foot-5 forward showed her versatility with a bullying layup through contact to put the Gamecocks up 13-4. The tide, however, turned soon after.
“We were right there,” Cooke said. “It’s tough, but I know we’re going to come back stronger and harder next year. … It was in our hands. We just came up short.
“It’s going to stick because it was a big game. Final Four. Dream to be here.”
Stanford closed the first quarter with a 9-0 run to tie the game at 15-15. Jones scored all of her nine first-half points in the quarter to keep the Cardinal afloat. The second quarter belonged to the Pac-12 champs. South Carolina had nearly a 10-minute span stretching across the first and second quarters without a basket. The Gamecocks managed just three field goals in the second quarter, and the Cardinal closed with a 7-3 stretch to take a 31-25 lead into the break.
The offense returned on both sides in the third quarter as the teams went back and forth and Stanford clung to a 52-49 lead after three quarters. The game turned into a duel between Jones and Cooke; both scored 11 points in the third quarter, with Jones working inside and out and Cooke knocking down three threes.
Henderson tried to drag South Carolina to the win in the fourth quarter, and her six straight points gave South Carolina a 65-64 lead, its first since the first quarter. But Jones’s heroics put the game away.
“Haley Jones was a problem for us,” said South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley, who added Boston won’t get over the missed opportunity for a long time. “We got a pretty decent, two looks at it. … I thought it was going to be redemption for Aliyah, just for that ball to drop in for her. But it wasn’t in the cards for us. … I just told our players the margin for error is that small competing for a national championship.
“They had a game plan for Aliyah Boston when she was on the floor. … She’s a perfectionist. … She holds herself to a higher standard, and that’s not part of her standard. That’s why it hurt so much.”
12:25 a.m.
Stanford outlasts South Carolina to reach women’s national championship game
Haley Jones scored a team-high 24 points and Stanford survived a wild finish to outlast South Carolina, 66-65, in Friday’s first women’s Final Four matchup in San Antonio.
The Cardinal advance to Sunday’s national championship game to face the winner of Connecticut and Arizona.
Jones scored the decisive basket after tracking down a loose ball off teammate Lexie Hull’s miss, sinking a jumper from the left side with 32 seconds remaining.
South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston stole an inbounds pass shortly thereafter to give the Gamecocks a final possession. Brea Beal missed a layup with one second to play, and Boston’s follow missed as well at the buzzer.
Zia Cooke led South Carolina with a game-high 25 points, making 5 of 8 three-pointers, and Destanni Henderson added 18.
Henderson had given the Gamecocks the lead, 65-64, on her third three-pointer with 39.1 seconds left in the fourth quarter. Henderson had a clean look when her defender, Kiana Williams, went under a ball screen.
Henderson made a three-pointer from a the right corner to draw South Carolina within 60-59 with 3:16 to play, but Kiana Williams got a difficult floater to fall, and the Cardinal expanded the lead to five points on Cameron Brink’s breakaway layup.
Henderson answered moments later with a three-point play after Boston collected two offensive rebounds, and Stanford called timeout on the ensuing possession with 1:09 to play, leading, 64-62.
Stanford was able match South Carolina’s physicality inside, outrebounding the Gamecocks for the vast majority of the game despite finishing at a deficit.
Boston, a first-team all-American and the SEC defensive player of the year, had 11 points, 16 rebounds and four blocks.
11:46 p.m.
Stanford holds three-point lead heading into final quarter
Haley Jones has 20 points on 9-for-11 shooting, to lead Stanford to a 52-49 lead over South Carolina after three quarters of their women’s Final Four matchup.
Lexie Hull has chipped in 12 points for Stanford but is shooting just 3 for 12. She has made all six of her three throw attempts.
Zia Cooke leads the Gamecocks with a game-high 23 points, including 5 of 7 on three-pointers. Aliyah Boston, the SEC defensive player of the year, has nine points, 11 rebounds and four blocks.
Stanford has five three-pointers through three quarters to give it 55 over the past five games, a record for most three-pointers in one NCAA women’s tournament.
After trailing for much of the third quarter, South Carolina tied the score at 43 on consecutive three-pointers from Cooke and junior guard Destanni Henderson, whose tying field goal came with 3:16 to play. It was the first basket of the game for Henderson after she missed her first four shots.
But Jones put Stanford back in front with layup after sitting out a lengthy portion of the second quarter with two personal fouls. The top-rated high school prospect in the country in 2019 had 11 points in the third quarter.
11:07 p.m.
Stanford leads South Carolina, 31-25, at halftime
Lexie Hull had eight points, and Ashten Prechtel came off the bench to add seven points and seven rebounds to spark Stanford to a 31-25 halftime lead against South Carolina in Friday’s first women’s Final Four matchup.
The Cardinal trailed by nine points in the first quarter but clamped down defensively, limiting South Carolina to 28 percent shooting, and owned a 23-18 rebounding advantage. South Carolina has not been outrebounded in a game this season.
Sophomore guard Zia Cooke had 12 points for South Carolina, and Aliyah Boston, the SEC defensive player of the year, added seven points, nine rebounds and four blocks.
The Gamecocks went more than nine minutes in the first half without a field goal until Cooke sank a three-pointer from the left wing that trimmed the deficit to 22-20 with 5:23 left in the second quarter.
10:42 p.m.
Stanford, South Carolina tied at 15 after first quarter
Stanford rallied over the final minutes to tie South Carolina at 15 after the first quarter of the first of Friday’s women’s Final Four games.
Haley Jones led the Cardinal, the women’s tournament’s overall top seed, with nine points on 4-for-6 shooting. Stanford committed five turnovers but made both of its three-point attempts and owned a 5-0 margin in second-chance points.
Zia Cooke scored six points for the Gamecocks, who shot 38 percent.
South Carolina opened with an 11-2 run sparked by Aliyah Boston, but the Cardinal rallied behind Jones, who was the nation’s top-rated high school prospect in 2019. Jones made several midrange jumpers to trigger a 7-0 run before going to the bench with two personal fouls.
Cardinal starting forward Cameron Brink was limited in the first quarter with a sore hamstring, leaving Coach Tara VanDerveer to go to Francesca Belibi to try to defend Boston. Ashen Prechtel also got a crack at guarding the first-team all-American.
10:00 p.m.
How they got here: South Carolina
NCAA tournament results: beat Mercer, 79-53; Oregon State, 59-42; Georgia Tech, 76-65; Texas 62-34
Elite Eight: South Carolina (26-4) pounced on Texas from the opening tip and never let up as the Gamecocks reached their third Final Four in program history.
How South Carolina can advance
Win the boards, win the game: On the surface, both South Carolina (third) and Stanford (13th) rank among the nation’s best in terms of rebounding differential. But after a closer look at each team’s rebounding stats, it’s clear that despite having similar totals, the Gamecocks are actually a more effective rebounding team as they secure 44.2 percent off their own missed shots — otherwise known as offensive rebounds.
Use defense to push the tempo on offense: With speedy guards like Zia Cooke and Destanni Henderson, South Carolina does an excellent job of translating defensive stops into quick buckets on the other end. Against Texas, South Carolina experienced multiple droughts on offense when it failed to get stops and was forced to run more half-court action, but went on decisive runs whenever it got out in transition. With the status of Stanford freshman Cameron Brink up in the air, getting out in transition could really put a strain on the Cardinal’s vaunted depth
Quotable: “You can’t look at it as the depth of Stanford. You can’t look at it as, they’re gonna spread you out. You can’t look at the cumulative stats. You can’t look at how many threes they make. You have to look at what you need to do to disrupt that. And that’s how we’re approaching it. We have to have major disruption, and let the chips fall where they may.” — South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley
10:00 p.m.
How they got here: Stanford
NCAA tournament results: beat Utah Valley, 87-44; Oklahoma State, 73-62; Missouri State, 89-62; Louisville, 78-63
Elite Eight: Following a 38-26 halftime deficit, the Cardinal roared back to life in the second half after it abandoned the three-point shot and turned up the defensive intensity to reach its 14th Final Four.
How Stanford can advance
Frustrate Aliyah Boston: While the Gamecocks have multiple players capable of carrying the scoring load, sophomore Aliyah Boston is truly irreplaceable. Even when she’s not scoring, Boston’s vision allows her to serve as a pressure release in the half court, often racking up vital hockey assists in the process. If Stanford’s guards can get Boston in early foul trouble by attacking the rim consistently, Boston would be forced to take a less aggressive approach on defense. As a result her teammates would be forced to drop down and help which should create more space for the Cards bread and butter — threes.
Trust the strength-in-numbers approach: After Tuesday’s come-from-behind win, Stanford’s Kiana Williams admitted that early on she was pressing and trying to do too much. Versus the Gamecocks, Stanford has to stick to the free-flowing approach that got it here. South Carolina’s defense is simply too good to let one player beat them and Stanford doesn’t have one player who’s capable of carrying the load on their own every night. What makes the Cardinal special is that you never know who the star will be that night.
Quotable: “There’s gonna be different solos every night, and we have gotten different solos, but the best thing is, when someone is doing a solo, the other members of the orchestra are still playing.” — Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer on how her team’s depth
Dawn Staley and Adia Barnes make history as Black head coaches in the Final Four
Dawn Staley made no bones about it — she was rooting for Arizona to advance to the Final Four. The South Carolina coach wasn’t thinking about matchups or anything that would have an impact on who won the 2021 NCAA women’s basketball tournament. She was simply thinking about representation.
The NCAA has been hosting a women’s basketball tournament since 1982, and for the first time in its history, the Final Four will feature two Black women as head coaches.
Staley and the Gamecocks, who won the 2017 national championship, will face Stanford at 6 p.m. Friday. On the other side of the bracket, the Adia Barnes-led Wildcats will make their first Final Four appearance and meet Connecticut at 9:30 p.m.
Stanford has reached its final destination, the Final Four, after a season-long journey
When the NCAA announced Feb. 5 that the entire women’s basketball tournament would be relocating to Texas, Stanford players and coaches braced for yet another extended trip after a regular season in which they spent more time on planes and in hotels than in their own beds.
Nearly two months and thousands of miles later, the top-seeded Cardinal (29-2) is still playing, having taken up residency in San Antonio over the past three weeks with the next performance scheduled in the Final Four against South Carolina (26-4), also a No. 1 seed, Friday night.
“Our team has really gone through a lot this season,” said Cardinal fifth-year senior Anna Wilson, the Pac-12’s co-defensive player of the year. “Every team has, but I’ve only experienced our team and the adversity we’ve kind of gone through and being on the road and everything and how close we’ve gotten as a team.”
Dawn Staley, another title in sight, won’t stop speaking out: ‘I can’t not do it’
At practice one afternoon in December, the South Carolina women’s basketball players spread out on a carpeted space away from the court. The university president wanted to talk to them.
Before games this season, most of the players, wanting to bring attention to systemic racism, had been sitting during the national anthem. Even with few fans in the arena, the act hadn’t gone unnoticed: There were boos, threats of boycott on Twitter and a Facebook rant describing the players as “unappreciative b—-es” and suggesting their head coach be imprisoned as an American traitor.
But in Columbia, S.C., the team’s coach, Dawn Staley, will sooner get a court named after her than face serious blowback. Since her arrival in 2008, she has built a women’s basketball dynasty on Southern football turf, making nine straight NCAA tournament appearances, capturing six conference tournament championships and winning the national title in 2017. On Sunday, her team opens the tournament as a No. 1 seed for the fifth time in the past eight years.
