PHOENIX — Raven Johnson walked into the South Carolina weight room for offseason workouts last summer and immediately noticed the display on screens in the room.
UConn 82, South Carolina 59.
The reminder of the national championship game loss was anything but subtle.
“It was a bad feeling,” said the senior point guard, recently named Sacramento 4 Regional Most Outstanding Player. “I’m seeing a score and then just seeing how much we lost by, I was like, ‘wow.’
“Like, this is crazy. But sometimes you need losses. Sometimes losses aren’t losses. They’re like lessons.”
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The Gamecocks get the chance Friday to show they learned their lesson from the program’s most lopsided NCAA tournament loss since falling to Baylor 93-68 in the 2019 Sweet 16. Coach Dawn Staley’s team hasn’t missed the Final Four since.
A standard has been created in Columbia, South Carolina, and revenge isn’t necessarily at the top of the motivation list. But performance coach Molly Binetti didn’t want that fateful day forgotten.
“She was just using the national championship as a way to motivate us,” sophomore guard Maddy McDaniel said. “She would say we’re doing all this work just to get to Phoenix. … Whether it was on the court in the weight room, they constantly kept us motivated.”
These are certainly different teams from last spring as the Huskies watched Paige Bueckers become the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft before being named league Rookie of the Year. Now, it’s Sarah Strong leading the way as The Associated Press Player of the Year.
South Carolina guard Raven Johnson said of last year’s title game loss to UConn, “Sometimes losses aren’t losses. They’re like lessons.” AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
Te-Hina Paopao, Sania Feagin and Bree Hall left South Carolina for the WNBA and MiLaysia Fulwiley moved on to LSU, but last season’s NCAA leading scorer Ta’Niya Latson joined from Florida State and senior center Madina Okot arrived from Mississippi State.
The faces changed, but here are two programs responsible for eight championships since 2013 standing in each other’s way for another chance to win it all. Staley said the formula is fairly simple — depth, coaching, talent, experience. Both rosters have plenty of that.
“We’re probably the most different team than any of the three [Final Four] teams,” Staley said. “But it goes to show when you have a core group of players that have experienced high-level basketball, they put you in position to be here again. There’s no secret about that.”
Latson remembers watching the 2025 championship and imagining what could be. The 59 points in that game were the third fewest scored all season by the Gamecocks, and now they sit as the third-highest-scoring team in the nation (87.1 points per game) behind only the Huskies (87.9).
“Just seeing them lose by 20, it was hard for even me to see that,” Latson said. “And I wasn’t even committed or thinking about committing to South Carolina at that time. Just seeing that, it was like, dang, UConn is a machine. I knew I could bring something different to that team … my maturity, my leadership and my scoring ability.”
