The scoreboard from November reads 69-52, South Carolina. File it away and largely forget it. Because when the No. 1 seed Gamecocks and the No. 9 seed Trojans meet again on Monday night at Colonial Life Arena, the context surrounding that number will matter far less than what both programs have become in the four months since they last shared a floor.
This is not a rematch in any meaningful sense. It is an introduction.
November Was a Different World
When South Carolina and Southern Cal met at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, it was the Gamecocks’ fourth game of the season and the Trojans’ third. Neither program had found its full identity. Neither roster had been tested by the grind of a conference schedule. The result — a second-half pullaway that was more comfortable than it was close — told you something about the talent gap between the programs, but almost nothing about what this specific Southern Cal team is capable of when it is fully formed and fully motivated.
Kennedy Smith, one of Southern Cal’s most versatile weapons, addressed the gap between then and now with the kind of perspective that suggests a team that has genuinely grown into itself.
“I would say the emotions are kind of the same,” Smith said. “It’s always good to play against the best competition in the tournament and in regular season. I think that game was good for us to build, for us to grow. Obviously, our team a couple of months ago wasn’t the same as it is right now, so just building off of that.”
That last phrase — building off of that — is the operative one. Southern Cal did not come into this tournament carrying the memory of November as a wound. They carried it as a blueprint. They know what it feels like to be outclassed on the boards, outpaced in transition, and eventually worn down by the depth and physicality of Staley’s program. The question is whether the adjustments they have made since then are enough to change the outcome.
The Jazzy Davidson Problem
Every analysis of this game begins and ends in the same place. Jazzy Davidson is not a player Southern Cal leans on — she is the entire offense, the primary ballhandler, the leading rebounder, and the defensive anchor all at once. She leads the Trojans in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks. For a freshman to carry that kind of statistical and operational load across an entire season is extraordinary. For her to then respond to her first NCAA Tournament game by dropping 31 points, six rebounds, five assists, and three steals across 45 minutes in an overtime thriller against Clemson is the kind of performance that forces a complete re-evaluation of whatever you thought you knew about her ceiling.
In November, the Gamecocks held Davidson to eight points, three rebounds, and three assists. That result offers a measure of comfort but should not breed complacency. Davidson was three games into her college career in November. She has played through an entire season since then, discovered what she is capable of at the highest level, and just proved she can will her team to a tournament victory on a night when she played every single minute of a five-overtime period.
Slowing her down is the central task. But as South Carolina’s own freshman Agot Makeer identified, the challenge is that Davidson does not have a single exploitable weakness — she has multiple strengths that compound each other.
“I think her versatility,” Makeer said. “She’s really good. She can score at every single level, and she can pass and get others involved. So I think just shutting her down and making others do the work, I think, is important.”
That tactical insight is sharper than it sounds. The traditional approach to stopping a dominant scorer is to take away their preferred attack — force them left, push them off the three-point line, make them operate in traffic. None of those approaches work cleanly on Davidson because she is effective in all of those spaces. The more viable strategy, which Makeer articulates precisely, is to make Davidson’s teammates beat you. Force the ball out of her hands and trust that Southern Cal’s supporting cast cannot replicate what she provides.
Raven Johnson, South Carolina’s premier perimeter defender and the player most likely to spend significant possessions shadowing Davidson, offered her own measured read of the challenge.
“She’s doing a really good job with the team she’s on and her role,” Johnson said. “As a freshman, she has a lot that she’s taken on, and I think she’s doing that to the best of her ability. I think we’re going to go with our game plan and do what we do.”
The respect in Johnson’s assessment is genuine, but so is the confidence. “Do what we do” is not a dismissal of the challenge — it is an affirmation of the process. South Carolina has spent years building a defensive identity that does not require a specific counter for every opponent. It requires execution of principles. Johnson has been the embodiment of those principles throughout her career, and this final home game will demand one more demonstration of everything she has built.
The Fatigue Factor: A Rare Tournament Variable
One element of this game that does not appear in box scores or advanced metrics deserves serious consideration: Southern Cal is tired in a way South Carolina is not.
In the NCAA Tournament, fatigue is rarely a meaningful differentiator because both teams typically play on the same schedule. Monday night is an exception. South Carolina played the early game on Saturday, routed Southern so thoroughly that no player exceeded 29 minutes, and went into Sunday’s preparation fresh. Southern Cal played the late game, needed overtime to survive against Clemson, and watched their three most important players — Davidson, Kara Dunn, and Kennedy Smith — play 45, 38, and 37 minutes respectively. In a game that went to overtime on a short turnaround, that is a significant physical debt.
Trojan head coach Lindsay Gottlieb acknowledged the recovery challenge while framing her team’s preparation around it.
“Not a lot of physical things for our players with the highest load,” Gottlieb said. “Some walk-through stuff, some mental stuff, some adjustments, and then some good work for people who need that, maybe who weren’t quite as high minutes. We’re kind of used to recovery and the mental side of things. Our players are not unfamiliar with that, so it will be more of that kind of day.”
Gottlieb’s coaching acumen is not in question — she managed these players through a Big Ten season that tested their resilience in multiple ways. But no amount of mental preparation fully restores legs that played 45 minutes 48 hours ago. If South Carolina applies pressure early and forces Davidson and her primary supporting cast to expend energy they may not fully have, the Trojans’ depth vulnerabilities become even more pronounced as the game progresses.
The Southern Cal Supporting Cast: Dangerous, But Dependent
While Davidson is the story, South Carolina would be careless to overlook the players around her. Kara Dunn averages 15.5 points and 5.1 rebounds and proved she can go for 22 on any given night, as she did against Clemson. Kennedy Smith, listed as a guard but operating as Southern Cal’s primary frontcourt presence, contributes 11.6 points and 4.6 rebounds. Both scored in double figures against the Gamecocks in November, and Smith’s four assists, three blocks, and two steals in that game revealed the full scope of her impact. Londynn Jones adds 10.2 points and was a 35-plus percent three-point shooter before this season, even if her percentages have dipped.
These are real players capable of real damage on the right night. But the structural issues undermining Southern Cal are equally real. The Trojans do not have a traditional point guard, which forces Davidson to shoulder the playmaking burden and contributes to a team shooting percentage of just 41.0 percent — a number that reflects how difficult it is to generate consistently efficient offense without a true distributor. Their frontcourt depth is similarly strained. Nobody in the normal starting lineup stands taller than 6-2, and while Gottlieb rotates three forwards in the 6-3 to 6-4 range off the bench, none of them average 14 minutes per game — a clear indicator of how much trust she has in that group when the game is on the line.
That size deficit was exposed catastrophically in November. Madina Okot had her first signature game as a Gamecock with 15 rebounds, Joyce Edwards posted a double-double, and South Carolina outrebounded Southern Cal 56-32. The margin was not close.
Okot, who has grown considerably since that November breakout, carries that experience into Monday’s rematch with a sharpened perspective.
“I’ve learned I just need to bring the same energy,” Okot said. “I learned a lot about being able to make good decisions, being able to read the defense, and just being able to finish layups and be aggressive.”
The acknowledgment of growth is significant. Okot is not simply planning to repeat what she did in November — she is approaching it as a baseline to build from, understanding that a Southern Cal team with something to prove will not give up those 56 rebounds again without a fight.
The McDaniel Question Lingers
Into this already complex picture comes one more variable that South Carolina is monitoring carefully. Sophomore guard Maddy McDaniel missed the first-round game with a stomach bug and, while she returned to practice Sunday and indicated she would be ready to go, the reality of her physical condition was visible.
“Mouse practiced a little bit today. We’ll see how she feels in the morning,” Staley said. “I know she wants to go.”
McDaniel’s importance to this team cannot be measured purely in her 4.8 points per game. She carries 79 assists against just 16 turnovers on the season, posts 0.6 turnovers per game — the best rate on the roster — and provides Staley with a uniquely clean offensive option off the bench. Her absence in the first round was manageable against a No. 16 seed with Staley down to four bench players. Against a Southern Cal team with multiple players capable of scoring in double figures, the flexibility McDaniel provides becomes significantly more valuable.
The Shadow of Juju Watkins
One final storyline hovering over this game is the player who will not play in it. Juju Watkins, Southern Cal’s transcendent talent who suffered a knee injury during last year’s NCAA Tournament, is with the team in Columbia but remains unavailable. Gottlieb, displaying the kind of dry humor that comes from months of managing a program through an unimaginable absence, joked about the psychological warfare value of simply suiting Watkins up for warmups.
“There was a point where she was doing something, and I think we were heading into a big Big Ten game,” Gottlieb said. “I said, if we just put her in a warm-up, just to see the reaction of the other coaches would be funny. But no, she’s doing what she’s supposed to do. I think we’ve played the long game with it. Obviously, her career and her overall health is the most important thing.”
The humor masks a genuine truth: Southern Cal has spent this entire season building an identity without their best player, and Davidson’s emergence as a franchise-level talent has been both the consequence and the silver lining of that absence. Whatever happens Monday, the Trojans have proven they are a real program beyond any single player — even one as exceptional as Watkins.
Monday night at Colonial Life Arena will be loud, consequential, and hard-fought in a way the November box score might not suggest is possible. South Carolina enters as the heavier favorite, with home court, superior depth, and a rebounding advantage that could be decisive against a frontcourt that cannot match them physically. But they are also playing a team that has evolved since November, led by a freshman playing the best basketball of her life on 45 minutes of overtime legs.
It is, in the truest sense, a new game entirely.
The Details: #1 South Carolina (32-3) vs. #9 Southern Cal (18-13) | Monday, March 23 | 8:00 p.m. ET | Colonial Life Arena, Columbia, SC | ESPN | Sendoff: 5:45 p.m., Marriott Columbia (1200 Hampton St.)
