Great seasons are remembered in moments. Not just final scores or championship runs, but the specific individual performances that turned games, defined players, and reminded everyone watching exactly why women’s basketball at its highest level is something worth celebrating. South Carolina’s 2024-25 campaign was filled with them — nights when a single player elevated beyond what the moment required and delivered something unforgettable. Here are the ten performances that defined it all.
10. Joyce Edwards vs. Texas A&M — 28 Points, 11 Rebounds
Heavily favored South Carolina found themselves in unexpected trouble, clinging to a precarious 55-51 lead early in the fourth quarter against a Texas A&M team that refused to fold. The game needed someone to take it. Edwards took it.
She scored 14 of her 28 points in the fourth quarter alone — accounting for all but two of South Carolina’s points in the final period. Four of her 11 rebounds came in that decisive stretch. She made all four of her free throw attempts when the pressure was highest. And while doing all of that offensively, she was simultaneously anchoring the top of the 1-3-1 zone that the Gamecocks deployed in the closing minutes to seal the win.
This was a performance that didn’t come in a marquee matchup or a nationally televised showdown. It came in a game that was supposed to be comfortable — which is precisely what makes it worth remembering. Edwards refused to let South Carolina sleepwalk through a game that could have slipped away quietly.
9. Agot Makeer vs. TCU — Elite Eight, Career-High 18 Points
The Elite Eight brought out the best version of Agot Makeer that South Carolina fans had seen all season — and what they saw was a player TCU simply had no answer for. Makeer posted a career-high 18 points, tied her career-high with 31 minutes of action, and added four rebounds, three assists, and three steals in a performance that was as complete as it was explosive.
The signature moment came in the fourth quarter — a 15-0 run to open the final period that turned a competitive Elite Eight game into a statement victory. Makeer was the engine of that run, her combination of length, quickness, and shot-making creating chaos that TCU’s defense could never organize against.
What this performance also represented was the full arrival of a player whose season had been defined by injury and inconsistency — a reminder of how different South Carolina’s year might have looked if this Makeer had shown up in November instead of March.
8. Madina Okot vs. Kentucky — 21 Points, 13 Rebounds
Some performances emerge from momentum and flow. This one emerged from necessity. In a sluggish game where her teammates struggled to find rhythm, Madina Okot became the entire offense — and responded to that responsibility with one of the most versatile individual performances of the entire season.
21 points, 13 rebounds, two blocks, two steals. South Carolina ran plays specifically designed to get Okot open for layups, jumpers, and three-pointers — and she made them all, outdueling Kentucky’s Clara Strack in a battle that the Wildcats had arrived hoping to win. The double-double was impressive enough. The fact that Okot’s points came from all three levels — not simply the paint, where her size could be exploited — demonstrated a completeness to her game that made her impossible to defend in a single, targeted way.
7. Agot Makeer vs. UConn — Final Four, 14 Points
Makeer makes this list twice — and the second entry, against UConn in the Final Four, may actually be the more significant performance despite the lower scoring total. Her 14 points on 2-2 three-point shooting were perfectly timed in ways that go beyond statistics.
The first three-pointer tied the game at the end of the first quarter after South Carolina had stumbled out of the blocks against an undefeated UConn team with everything to prove. The second put the game firmly in South Carolina’s control in the fourth quarter, removing whatever doubt remained about the outcome. Two shots. Both at moments when the game’s direction hung in the balance. Both delivered.
But the number that tells the full story of this performance is 3-15 — the shooting line of future No. 1 WNBA draft pick Azzi Fudd. Makeer’s defensive work in limiting one of the most gifted offensive players in the country to that level of efficiency was arguably the single most important defensive contribution of South Carolina’s entire tournament run.
6. Raven Johnson vs. LSU — Valentine’s Day, 19 Points
By this point in the season, Johnson filling up a box score had become an expectation rather than a surprise. But even by her elevated standards, Valentine’s Day against LSU was special. 19 points, seven rebounds, six assists, four steals — a performance so complete that describing it as a box score almost undersells what she actually did to that game.
She set what was then a career-high in scoring. She tied her career-high by going 8-10 from the free throw line. She was everywhere — scoring, facilitating, defending, and creating — in a game that had the emotional weight of a playoff contest given the history between the two programs and the spectacle surrounding it.
5. Ta’Niya Latson vs. Oklahoma — Sweet 16, 28 Points
This performance deserves its full context before the numbers can be properly appreciated. In the regular-season meeting between these two programs, Latson went 1-10 from the field. Oklahoma arrived at the Sweet 16 with a game plan built around that memory — an approach that surrendered the paint to South Carolina’s interior players while hoping Latson would struggle again.
She scored 28 points on 7-11 shooting and went 10-10 from the free throw line.
The willingness of Latson to accept the challenge of a targeted defensive scheme and dismantle it so completely — against the same opponent that had held her scoreless just weeks earlier — was the kind of competitive response that defines elite players. She added five assists. She made every free throw. And she did it in a game where Oklahoma’s entire defensive strategy was built specifically around stopping her.
“Oklahoma never had a chance,” as the post-game summaries noted. Latson made sure of it personally.
4. Tessa Johnson vs. LSU — Valentine’s Day, 21 Points
If Raven Johnson’s performance against LSU on Valentine’s Day was the complete game, Tessa Johnson’s was the creative spark that kept South Carolina’s head above water long enough for the rest to follow. She scored 16 of her 21 points in the first half, going 4-5 from three-point range in a stretch of shooting so hot it immediately spawned a meme — the now-famous observation that nobody guarded Tessa Johnson, a lapse in LSU’s defensive attention that she exploited with merciless efficiency.
But the single play that captures this performance perfectly is the reverse layup before halftime that put South Carolina up 41-40. In a game of enormous emotional weight — College GameDay, a sold-out arena, the return of Milaysia Fulwiley on the program — Johnson’s go-ahead basket at the break quietly became the most important shot of the entire contest. Without it, the second half looks different. With it, South Carolina had the platform they needed.
3. Ta’Niya Latson vs. UConn — Final Four, 16 Points, 11 Rebounds
The numbers from this game — 16 points, 11 rebounds, 10-10 from the free throw line — are remarkable in isolation. In context, they are extraordinary. The Final Four against UConn was a defensive war, a game defined by resistance, compression, and the grinding attrition of two elite programs refusing to yield anything easily.
In that environment, Latson did what she was brought to South Carolina specifically to do: she manufactured offense when none existed organically. Every basket she scored came against a defense that was specifically prepared for her, in a game where possessions were precious and mistakes were punished. She also contributed on the other end — helping hold UConn to its second-lowest tournament point total in program history, a detail that encapsulates how completely the transfer-year investment in Latson’s development under Staley had paid off.
2. Joyce Edwards vs. TCU — Elite Eight, 24 Points, 12 Rebounds
Oklahoma had chosen to double and triple-team Edwards in the Sweet 16. TCU watched that film and made the opposite decision — they would play her straight-up, one-on-one, and bet that their individual defender was good enough to contain her.
It was not.
24 points, 12 rebounds, three blocks, two assists — a dominant, authoritative performance against a team that had specifically chosen to test Edwards in isolation and paid the full price for that choice. This was a double-double delivered against a defensive scheme built to prevent exactly that, in an Elite Eight game where the stakes couldn’t have been higher. TCU’s decision to play Edwards straight-up was, in retrospect, one of the most consequential tactical miscalculations of the entire tournament.
1. Raven Johnson vs. LSU — SEC Tournament Semifinals, Career-High 22 Points
There are great individual performances, and then there are performances that transcend sport entirely — moments so complete, so perfectly timed, and so deeply embedded in the emotional stakes of the occasion that they become the defining memory of an entire season.
This was that performance.
Career-high 22 points. Eight assists. Three rebounds. In a game that had everything — an electric mixed crowd, a rivalry soaked in recent history, and a one-on-one battle between Johnson and her former teammate MiLaysia Fulwiley that played out like something scripted rather than something real.
Fulwiley was spectacular. She matched her career-high 24 points — the same total that had earned her SEC Tournament MVP honors the previous year as a Gamecock. She came for everything. She was brilliant. And Johnson was better.
The career-high scoring. The eight assists that made every teammate a weapon. And then, with the game on the line, the decision that said everything about who Raven Johnson actually is — she didn’t look for her own shot. She found Madina Okot for the go-ahead layup. Fulwiley turned the ball over. South Carolina won.
Not with an individual moment of glory. With an act of complete, selfless, team-first brilliance on the biggest stage available.
It was the best game by a Gamecock in a season full of them. And it was brilliant. 🏀
