PHOENIX — The biggest game of the women’s college basketball season tips off Friday night, and two questions cut to the heart of whether South Carolina can end UConn’s perfect season and claim its place in the national championship game.
Question One: Is This the Real Agot Makeer?
The evidence says yes — and the context makes the answer even more compelling.
Makeer’s tournament run has not come out of nowhere. This is precisely how she performed at the U19 World Cup last summer, where she announced herself as a legitimate elite prospect on an international stage. The freshman learning curve that slowed her early in the season was real, but it was compounded by something beyond the normal adjustment period — she got hurt. Repeatedly. Every time she found a rhythm and began to settle into her role, an injury forced her to restart the process from scratch.
What we may be watching now is not a hot streak. It may simply be the natural progression of a talented player finally allowed to play consecutive games at full health. The version of Makeer that has shown up in the NCAA Tournament — defensively disruptive, offensively efficient, making winning plays in high-leverage moments — aligns too closely with her international performance to be dismissed as a fluke.
If she is healthy and operating at this level on Friday night, she fundamentally changes what South Carolina can do defensively against Azzi Fudd and UConn’s perimeter attack.
Question Two: Can South Carolina Actually Beat UConn?
This is the only question that ultimately matters — and the honest answer is: we shall see.
UConn is 38-0. They lead the nation in both offensive and defensive field goal percentage. They have Azzi Fudd, Sarah Strong, and Geno Auriemma, who has been in this position so many times that pressure appears to be his natural habitat. They beat South Carolina by 23 points in last year’s national championship game.
And yet. South Carolina is not the same team. Madina Okot gives Dawn Staley a true center she did not have in Tampa. Ta’Niya Latson adds a scoring dimension that changes defensive scouting. Joyce Edwards is playing the best basketball of her career. And Makeer — if the first question has the right answer — provides a defensive wildcard that UConn has not had to prepare for against this program before.
The Gamecocks also carry something that does not appear in a box score: the specific hunger of a team that knows exactly what it felt like to lose on the biggest stage, and has spent every day since preparing to make sure it does not happen again.
The Play That Shows South Carolina at Its Best
Before getting to Friday, it is worth examining a moment from the Elite Eight win over TCU that captured exactly what this team can look like when everything connects.
Tessa Johnson had struggled defensively in the first half against TCU — a notable concern given UConn’s perimeter firepower — but she tightened up considerably in the second half. On one possession late in the game, she forced a turnover and immediately pushed the pace. What happened next was the kind of play that does not show up in a stat line but tells you everything about a team’s offensive intelligence.
Makeer received the ball in transition and, rather than taking what was available to her, made the extra pass to Joyce Edwards, who had sprinted the floor from the other end. Edwards finished. The sequence — turnover, push, read, extra pass, score — is the distillation of South Carolina’s offensive philosophy. It is unselfish, it is decisive, and it is beautiful basketball.
If the Gamecocks can play Friday night the way they played in that moment — connected, fast, and willing to make the right play over the easy one — UConn’s perfect season may be in genuine danger.
The answer to both questions arrives Friday night at 7 p.m. ET.
