COLUMBIA, S.C. — Colonial Life Arena is about to host the NCAA Tournament for the first time this season, and for a program that has made March Madness feel like a home event, the setting could not be more appropriate. No. 1 seed South Carolina will open the 2026 NCAA Tournament on Saturday, March 21 at 1 p.m. ET against the winner of No. 16 seeds Southern and Samford — and if Dawn Staley’s program does what it has done in fourteen of its fifteen previous tournament appearances under her watch, a second home game follows two days later.
Here is everything fans need to know before March arrives in Columbia.
The Setup: Two Home Games, One Familiar Building
South Carolina enters the NCAA Tournament at 31-3, carrying the No. 1 seed in the Sacramento 4 Regional and the home-court advantage that comes with it. The Gamecocks’ first-round opponent will be determined by a First Four play-in game between Southern and Samford on March 18-19, with the survivor advancing to Colonial Life Arena for a 1 p.m. ET tipoff on March 21, broadcast nationally on ABC.
A first-round win sets up a second-round home game on March 23 against the winner of No. 8 Clemson and No. 9 Southern Cal — two programs with genuine basketball credibility and, in Southern Cal’s case, an ongoing series rivalry with the Gamecocks that has been building across multiple seasons. Both potential opponents would generate a second-round atmosphere in Columbia worth the price of admission alone.
Should South Carolina advance past the first two rounds, the Sacramento Regional sends the Gamecocks to California for the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight, with a Final Four berth pointing toward Phoenix, Arizona.
Tickets: How and Where to Buy
Tickets for South Carolina’s home games in the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament are available through StubHub, with prices starting at $231. Colonial Life Arena holds 18,000 fans — a capacity that South Carolina has filled more consistently than virtually any program in the history of women’s college basketball.
The Gamecocks have led the nation in home attendance for 11 consecutive seasons, a streak that recently surpassed Pat Summitt’s Tennessee program for the longest such run in NCAA history. Last season, South Carolina drew a program-record 16,437 fans per home game — an average that reflects both the quality of the product on the floor and the depth of the fan community that has grown around this program over the past decade.
For fans attending in person, the experience of watching a No. 1 seed host NCAA Tournament games in front of a packed Colonial Life Arena is as close to a guaranteed memorable sporting event as exists in women’s college basketball. The building, the crowd, and the occasion combine into something that goes beyond a typical home game.
Dawn Staley: Chasing History in Her 15th NCAA Tournament
The numbers surrounding Staley’s tenure at South Carolina have reached a level of historical significance that deserves its own section. This is her 15th NCAA Tournament appearance in 18 seasons as head coach — an appearance rate that reflects not just talent recruitment but sustained organizational excellence across nearly two decades.
Staley is chasing her sixth consecutive Final Four appearance and her eighth in the last eleven seasons. That consistency of deep tournament runs — maintained across roster turnover, staff changes, and the inevitable physical demands of a long season — is the single most compelling argument for Staley’s place among the greatest coaches in the history of women’s college basketball.
This season’s SEC campaign added another line to an already extraordinary resume. Staley won her 10th SEC regular-season title after finishing conference play at 15-1 — a record that places her SEC championship total in the same conversation as Pat Summitt’s 16, the all-time record. The SEC Tournament ended differently, with Texas defeating South Carolina in Greenville — the loss that denied Staley a 10th conference tournament title and provided the program with the one unresolved piece of competitive motivation heading into March.
The Championship Foundation
South Carolina arrives at the 2026 NCAA Tournament as a three-time national champion — 2017, 2022, and 2024. The most recent title came during an undefeated 38-0 season that produced a program record in single-season wins and stands as one of the most dominant championship runs in the history of women’s college basketball.
That 2024 title is the standard against which everything since has been measured, and the 2025-26 Gamecocks — at 31-3, with the No. 1 seed secured and four seniors playing their final games in the garnet and black — have spent the entire season building toward the possibility of matching it.
Raven Johnson, Ta’Niya Latson, Madina Okot, and Maryam Dauda each carry championship experience into this tournament. Johnson has won two national titles in Columbia and gone 136-7 as the starting point guard. The weight of that experience — the understanding of what winning in March actually requires, metabolized across multiple deep runs — is a competitive asset that cannot be recruited or replicated. It can only be accumulated, game by game, over years of sustained excellence.
The Bottom Line
Colonial Life Arena on March 21 at 1 p.m. ET is the starting point for what South Carolina hopes will end in Phoenix on April 5th. The building will be full. The crowd will be loud. The program will be ready.
That has been true every March for fifteen consecutive years under Dawn Staley. There is no reason to expect anything different now.
First Round: Saturday, March 21 | 1:00 p.m. ET | Colonial Life Arena, Columbia, S.C. | ABC
Second Round: Monday, March 23 | Colonial Life Arena, Columbia, S.C.
Tickets: Available via StubHub, starting at $231
