COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina closed out its regular-season home schedule with a 112-71 dismantling of Missouri on Senior Night, clinching the SEC regular-season title outright in the process. The celebration was well-earned. But 24 hours later, the conversation in Columbia has shifted from what was accomplished Thursday night to what might be missing on Sunday afternoon.
Tessa Johnson was back on the practice floor on February 27th. Whether she will be on the court in Lexington on March 1st remains, for now, an open question.
What We Know — and What Staley Isn’t Saying
Johnson missed Thursday’s win over Missouri after being listed as out on the SEC injury report approximately one hour before tipoff. South Carolina subsequently described the issue on social media as an “upper body contusion” — a characterization that offered some clarity on the nature of the injury without resolving the most pressing question: how soon is she back?
When asked directly whether it was safe to assume Johnson would play against Kentucky, Staley declined to answer. When pressed on whether the SEC injury report would provide clarity, she confirmed it would. A new report for the Kentucky game is expected at 8:10 p.m. ET on February 28th, with a follow-up published the morning of the game. Those reports will tell the story Staley is not yet ready to tell publicly.
What Staley did offer was a telling moment of transparency wrapped in humor. She joked that reporters would immediately post on social media that Johnson had been practicing with the starters — a comment that functions less as a deflection and more as an acknowledgment that she is not attempting to obscure the situation. Johnson is practicing. The program is not hiding it. The timeline, however, remains in the hands of the medical staff.
It is worth noting this is not Johnson’s first absence this season. She missed a game on December 7th due to illness, and she has navigated the kind of physical wear that accumulates across a deep and demanding SEC schedule. That context makes her status for the Kentucky finale consequential not just as a one-game concern, but as a barometer for her readiness heading into the SEC Tournament the following week.
Who Johnson Is and Why She Matters
To understand what South Carolina potentially loses without Johnson in the lineup, it helps to understand precisely what she provides when healthy.
Johnson is averaging 13.1 points and 3.5 rebounds per game as a junior guard — numbers that rank her among South Carolina’s top three contributors on any given night. But the statistic that most precisely defines her value to this offense is her three-point shooting percentage: 45.5%, which leads the SEC and ranks eighth in the nation. When the updated figures are applied, she sits third nationally — a distinction that places her among the most dangerous perimeter shooters in women’s college basketball.
The downstream effect of that shooting threat is what makes her truly irreplaceable in Dawn Staley’s system. When defenses must account for a player shooting 45.5% from three, the geometry of the floor changes. Help rotations become more expensive. The paint opens. Joyce Edwards, averaging 20.1 points per game, and Madina Okot, who produced 26 points and 17 rebounds on Senior Night, operate in space that Johnson’s presence — whether she is shooting or simply threatening to shoot — directly creates.
Thursday’s win over Missouri illustrated both the depth of South Carolina’s offensive options and the specific gap Johnson leaves. Raven Johnson hit a career-high four three-pointers, and Maddy McDaniel added two from beyond the arc — but those are contributions made by players who are not Tessa Johnson, filling a role that is most naturally hers. The Gamecocks managed 112 points without her. The question is not whether they can function without Tessa Johnson. It is whether they want to enter the SEC Tournament having grown comfortable doing so.
The Adhel Tac Update: Still Day-to-Day
Johnson is not the only health concern occupying Staley’s attention. Sophomore post player Adhel Tac remains day-to-day with a lower leg injury that has kept her out since February 5th. She is still using a medical scooter to move around and has been absent from practices — a combination of details that does not suggest an imminent return.
Tac has not played in nearly a month, and with the SEC Tournament beginning March 6th in Greenville, the window for her to return and contribute meaningfully in the postseason is narrowing with each passing day. Staley’s characterization of her as “day-to-day” at least leaves the door open, but the scooter and the practice absence paint a picture of a timeline that remains genuinely uncertain.
For a player the coaching staff has described in glowing terms — Staley once compared Tac’s defensive intelligence to Aliyah Boston — her absence represents unused depth at a position where South Carolina would welcome every available body heading into March.
What Kentucky Presents
The final regular-season destination is not a comfortable one. No. 18 Kentucky enters Sunday at 21-8 overall and 8-7 in conference play, a record that places the Wildcats in an eight-seed bubble heading into the SEC Tournament. They have every incentive to play their best basketball on their home floor on the final day of the regular season.
Kentucky’s roster presents specific challenges that make Tessa Johnson’s presence particularly relevant. The Wildcats feature Tonie Morgan, who scores 14.4 points per game and distributes a nation-leading 8.3 assists per game — a combination that makes her one of the most complete point guards in the conference and a player capable of creating advantages at every level of the floor. At the interior, 6-foot-5 center Clara Strack averages 16.4 points and 10.2 rebounds — a genuine post presence who will test Okot and South Carolina’s interior defenders in ways that Missouri simply could not.
Against that backdrop, the Gamecocks need their perimeter shooting to be functional. Kentucky’s guards are talented enough defensively to make drives to the paint difficult, which makes the threat of Tessa Johnson — or her absence — a tactical variable with real consequences for how Kentucky chooses to defend the Gamecocks on Sunday afternoon.
The Bigger Picture: Managing Health Into March
South Carolina has lost 57 player games to injury and illness this season — a figure that reflects the relentless physical toll of playing at the highest level of women’s college basketball across a full SEC schedule. The program has absorbed each absence and continued winning, which speaks to the depth Staley has built and the culture that sustains it.
But depth has limits, and the SEC Tournament is not the regular season. South Carolina will enter Greenville as the No. 1 seed, but the difference between a healthy, complete roster and a shorthanded one is the difference between surviving the bracket and running through it.
The injury report at 8:10 p.m. on February 28th will tell South Carolina fans what Staley would not say on Friday. Between now and then, the program’s medical staff holds the most important information in the Gamecock universe — and the answer they provide will shape how confidently this program enters the final chapter of a season that has been building toward something historic since October.
South Carolina at Kentucky | Sunday, March 1 | 2:00 p.m. ET | SEC Network
