Four down, two to go. Gamecocks WBB celebrates Final Four spot with eyes on top prize

Red, blue, orange, white and navy confetti fell on coach Dawn Staley’s head then spilled onto the floor.

Players crouched down, scooped up the excess pieces and threw them back in the air again, watching the colorful flecks of tissue paper float in the air through widened eyes. They made confetti angels and stored handfuls of it into their “Final Four” ball caps. They posed for photos, filmed TikTok dances and hugged just about every person inside the yellow security rope on the court at MVP Arena.

The Gamecocks celebrated with family, chosen and otherwise, after a 70-58 victory over Oregon State in the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight game. Behind their wide smiles and bright eyes, though, they’re already thinking about the task ahead. Yes, they’re Final Four bound again (for the fourth year in a row), but they didn’t come this far just to come this far.

They came here to win it all.

Two. More. Games.

“We don’t wanna get too excited, because last year we got too excited, and look what happened. Somebody hit us in the hole,” Raven Johnson, the nomenclator of this South Carolina team’s “revenge season,” said after Sunday’s regional finals game. “So we have unfinished business.”

“We’re trying to savor it,” sophomore Chloe Kitts said, “but we’re just so excited for the next step.”

They seemed to revel in the moment immediately after the buzzer sounded. After the players and assistant coaches finished cutting off their own pieces of the net, Staley climbed the ladder for her second “netlace” of the 2023-24 postseason. After pulling it off the orange hoop, she swung it in the air, with pieces of nylon flying around her like snow.

Most fans exited the arena after a while, but a dedicated, chosen few trickled down to the first rows of the lower bowl. They clamored South Carolina players for autographs and pictures, shouting for Te-Hina Paopao and MiLaysia Fulwiley by nickname. “Lay!” they cried. “Pao!”

Little girls in eclectic women’s basketball garb (one had a green Sue Bird Seattle Storm jersey on, while another wore a T-shirt she bought here in Albany for the regional) smiled as they looked on at the Gamecocks. But so did grown women, equally inspired, if not more, by the young women before them, regardless of stature or age.

Fulwiley gave her game shoes — “They were low-top Curry Flows,” Fulwiley said. “They were tough, though. They were brand new. Fresh and white and clean.” — to a young girl in the stands.

“That’s my dream,” Fulwiley said. “For people I look up to to just be nice. It doesn’t hurt us to be nice or to give it away. I just try to do what I can do. And it just makes their day because they probably paid a lot of money to go to the games.”

For first-year assistant coach Khadijah Sessions, who was part of South Carolina’s first Final Four team in 2015, Sunday was surreal. Reaching this threshold as a coach, she said, is sweeter. Knowing she played an instrumental role in pushing these players through to this point.

But she can recall, vividly, what it was like as a player to leave the Final Four without the national championship trophy.

“I don’t want to feel that way no more,” Sessions said. “So I’m gonna still be locked in, more than ever now. It’s a blessing. We’re gonna enjoy it. Twenty-four-hour rule coach Staley does, and we’re gonna get right back to work.”

Junior forward Sania Feagin has an 8:30 a.m. class Monday. In the throes of a regional finals celebration, she had trouble remembering the class’ name. She’s not sure where she’ll find the time to celebrate this win in the next 24 hours, in accordance with Staley’s rule. There’s her “student” responsibilities (“I mean, ‘student athlete,’ ‘student first,’ ” she said, smiling and shaking her head) — practice, laundry, packing for Cleveland, and then lift-off.

Center Kamilla Cardoso made the All-Regional Team with her best friend and point guard Raven Johnson. Cardoso earned the additional distinction of Most Outstanding Player. Ask her if that means anything, though, and she’ll shrug.

“I don’t really care about that. We’re here to win games.”

Four down. Two to go.