Minor Adjustments Had A Major Impact Against Mississippi State

The Gamecocks made a few tweaks to their defensive strategy and to things to another level against in the SEC Championship.

Sunday the South Carolina Gamecocks showed that they can not only adapt, but take their game to the next level as they won their 5th SEC title in six with little resistance from Mississippi State.

According to several players, a few minor adjustments turned what could’ve been a down to the wire thriller into an absolute blowout as South Carolina won 76-62.

“I think we locked in definitely on defense,” forward Laeticia Amihere said. “We focused a lot more on their dribble drive. That’s what they do a lot and they’re very successful at it so we made sure that we contained it.

Lele Grissett added that they did a better job of not letting the moment get to big for them.

 “When we first went against them we were too hype, and the hypeness got in the way,” Grissett said. “When we saw them the second time, we knew what we had to do.”

Head coach Dawn Staley has said throughout this season she’s allowed this team to find their way and have input in the game plan and this weekend was no different.

“I mean, I would just say we have open dialogue with our players last night. It was 10:00 at night. We're going over our scouting report with our players,” Staley said. “I asked Ty ‘how you want to play this? How you want to play them?’ She was like ‘we need to zone them.’ In Coach Fred's scouting report he talked about zoning them before they got in the room.”

Staley added that it then become up to here to take what they were saying into consideration.

“I'm just like, you hear it once, you hear it twice from a player, then you just kind of formulating,” she said. “Although we didn't play a whole, whole lot of zone, we created zone concepts within our man. That was what got them under control because they weren't having their way with dribble-drive down the lane. Our commitment to that. It's that type of team where we had very little practice and we just talked about things. They can see it. When you have a team like that can visualize it and see it without having to have a hundred reps and a lot of prep time, that's probably the difference maker in teams of our past and this present team, that they just have a better understanding of how to play the game.”

The Gamecocks will find out who they face in the first round during the NCAA Selection Show on March 16.