Alabama Women's Basketball Falls on the Road to No. 4 South Carolina 87-63
For the second straight game, Alabama was hanging tough in the first half against a ranked team on the road . However once again, the Crimson Tide could not carry that momentum throughout the second half resulting in a 87-63 loss to No. 4 South Carolina on Sunday afternoon.
"I thought our kids really tried to battle today. We’ve just got to put the third and the fourth quarter together," coach Kristy Curry said after the loss.
Alabama falls to 12-4, 5-4 Southeastern Conference with all four losses coming against teams currently ranked in the top-20.
Alabama took a 41-40 lead into halftime, after some early three-pointers from seniors Jordan Lewis and Jasmine Walker along with help off the bench from Destiny Rice who had nine first-half points.
The offensive production slowed down in the second half, as Alabama only made two three-point shots and Rice was held scoreless.
One of those second-half threes from Lewis cut the South Carolina lead to 47-46 early in the third quarter, and that was the closest Alabama was able to get to the Gamecocks in the second half.
"I thought we did some really good things, we just missed shots," Curry said. "When the other team makes them when you miss them it’s hard.”
As the shots started to fall for South Carolina, the lead became too unmanageable for the Crimson Tide.
Overall, the rebounding was much improved from Alabama's previous matchup against the Gamecocks. Back on Jan. 4, South Carolina out-rebounded Alabama 55-31 which included 26 offensive rebounds. Alabama held the Gamecocks to 11 offensive rebounds in the second opportunity.
Even after the loss, Curry was optimistic about her team's position heading into February. Alabama does not have a bad loss on its résumé and has more quality win opportunities ahead, starting with No. 22 Georgia on Thursday night in Coleman Coliseum.
"We're right where we want to be," Curry said. "Certainly, we'd love to be undefeated and have all those back, but again our résumé we continue to hope is a benefit from playing these guys twice and continuing our NET to stay in the 20s and control what we can."
