Gamecocks Earn Much Needed Rest Before First SEC Tournament Game

South Carolina earned a double bye in the SEC Tournament and don't play their first game until Friday.

In her last game at Colonial Life Arena, Mikiah Herbert Harrigan decided to put on a show against No. 12 Texas A&M.

She dominated the game early on, scoring 15 of South Carolina’s first 17 points. In an emotional Senior Day game that the Gamecocks seemed out of sync throughout, Herbert Harrigan was the stabilizing force. As a result the No.1 Gamecocks won 60-52 and finished the regular season 29-1 and 16-0 in the SEC.

As a reward, the Gamecocks earned a double bye in the SEC Tournament and play their first game Friday at noon.

Dawn Staley said the team now gets some much needed rest.

“We basically took Friday off because they said they were a little fatigued,” she said. “…so we’ll get some rest, we don’t play until Friday, so hopefully we don’t add rust to it over the week. We will take some days off and get back to it on Wednesday and get ourselves ready.”

The Gamecocks will also be rewarded with what Tyasha Harris called “a homecourt advantage” as the tournament is just two hours away in Greenville. Harris said she expects the South Carolina “fams” to make a difference this weekend much like they have her entire collegiate career.

“It’s amazing because when we go play other teams on the road, you can tell the difference and you can tell how much energy our fams bring in.” she said. “Just from the UConn game, there were a couple plays where they couldn’t tell what plays Geno [Auriemma] was calling or the point guard was calling because out fams were so loud. I mean they help us tremendously.”

South Carolina will need that help as a good bit of its key players will be playing in the post season for the first time. Staley said she doesn’t want her young players to hit a wall at the worst possible time.

“It’s a lot of pressure, especially when we’ve been having so much success,” she said. “You’re always coaching against the bad play, it’s gonna come, you just don’t know when. I was just always coaching from a ‘when is this team going to play really bad? When are we really gonna have to dig ourselves out of holes?’ and it got close. I wanted this season to end a lot sooner than today. But this team, it welcomes challenges. We had the challenges of winning the regular season undefeated, now we have the next challenge to win the SEC tournament. We’ll put that in front of them on Wednesday and we’ll play it out.”

It’s tournament time! 🏀

The #SECWBB Bracket is officially set: https://t.co/heRKO6TNnA pic.twitter.com/Kl6rTMdiU9

— Southeastern Conference (@SEC) March 1, 2020