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Andrea Adelson
Tampa, Fla. – South Carolina He has a lot of familiarity with other teams in Final Four – Gamecocks lost with all of them this season.
This provided an even higher level of motivation when they try to repeat as a national champions. South Carolina faces Texas Friday fourth time this season. Gamecocks has already avenged his regular loss of Texas season by winning the SeC tournament of the Championship.
But on the other side of the holder lost South Carolina Teased and Uconne in a regular season. South Carolina will head to Final Four at 34-3, which is the most common loss of the season since 2020-21, when it had five.
“I think it motivates us to want to play better,” Mailasia Fulwileia He said Thursday during the availability of media. “We didn’t have our great games versus, and the teams we played had excellent games. They couldn’t miss it. So they’re hoping and praying and feeling the roles.
“We just have to go there and show that our best basketball has to come yet. So it motivates me because we owe them one.”
In fact, South Carolina enters Final Four, which does not play its best basketball. Gamecocks needed to gather to win their last three NCAA tournament games after they were inconsistent playing for big sections in victory Indiana, Maryland and Duke.
It was a sharp contrast to how well South Carolina played after the loss of UConn in February, which ended its home winning lane of 71 games. After this loss, South Carolina won eight two digits and did not have to sweat in the fourth quarter.
Indiana had a half -time lead in its second round, while Maryland and Duke had the lead in the fourth quarter. Forward Chloe Kitts He said that in the last few days of practice has been focused with confidence.
“We know what we can do. We’ve done it before. We talked about individually, everyone has to be confident. We’re here for some reason. We play in South Carolina for some reason. We’re for some reason to Final Four.
UCLA gave South Carolina its first loss of the season in November and ended the winning lane of 43 games. At that time, the players said they were still learning how to play each other after changes in the line -up. UCLA ended with total seed no. 1 partly because of victory over their heads over South Carolina in November. South Carolina lost in Texas largely in February because he got into unpleasant problems, said Coach Dawn Staley on Thursday. But Gamecocks also defeated Longhorns twice and said Staley, “We won’t wander too far to the left or right of the things we did were positive to help us.”
The loss of UConn was particularly shocking because it came at home and the 29-point loss was the largest margin of defeat in South Carolina since 2008. South Carolina has already had a match with Texas and would have won more regardless of who will win between Uconn and UCLA.
“This is our only opportunity to show the world that we just had a game,” Fulwiley said. “We have enough in the room to compete against these teams, and I think we did not show it for the first time. So we have to lock and be faithful to ourselves and understand that it will take all 12 of us to go out with these winnings, and I think we will.”
