MINNEAPOLIS — At the end of the third quarter, as the clock ticked down, Aliyah Boston took matters into her own hands.
Her No. 1 South Carolina Gamecocks had a six-point lead over the Louisville Cardinals—enough to offer a bit of separation, perhaps, but certainly not enough to feel comfortable. With eight seconds left in the quarter, South Carolina guard Destanni Henderson tried a jumper from the corner, hoping to push the lead to nine. She missed. And then Boston did what she has so often this season. She grabbed the rebound in traffic, rising above the tangle of arms under the basket in one crisp motion. She got the layup and the whistle, too, then walked to the line for the and-one. Swish. There was that nine-point lead, after all.
And as soon as they were back out on the floor? Again: On the first play of the fourth quarter, there was Boston, grabbing the offensive board after a missed jumper from a teammate and turning it into a successful layup. She’d just stretched the lead to double digits. The Gamecocks would not look back. Against one of the fiercest teams in the country, South Carolina cruised to a 72–59 win, and its first trip to the national championship since 2017.
Eric Gay/AP
For months now, it has seemed all but impossible to imagine the Gamecocks’ season ending at any point short of Sunday’s title game. They had been No. 1 from the preseason straight through to the tournament. They have a deep, talented roster around the nation’s consensus best player in Boston, led by one of its best coaching minds in Dawn Staley. But there are no givens in March—as this program knows all too well, after a stinging loss in the 2021 Final Four, with a team that had looked similarly championship-bound—and its hopes for a path forward could not be taken for granted.
With this statement win over Louisville, the Gamecocks exorcized some of those demons from last year, and they proved once again that, yes, this team is really as good as it looks.
“This year, we knew that we were going to be tested, and this is the hump that we needed to get over,” Boston said. “And we got over that tonight. We're on to the national championship game.”
Boston finished with 23 points, 18 rebounds and four assists without committing a single foul. In a tournament that has been full of remarkable play by her, this was perhaps her most dazzling night yet. (With the win in hand, Staley pulled her off the court to rest for the final few minutes of the fourth quarter; otherwise, Boston likely would have had a chance to pick up two more boards for her second 20–20 performance of the tourney.) She even sank her first three-pointer in more than a month. It was a showcase of everything that makes her so difficult to play against.
No one has needed a reminder, exactly, that Boston is the most dominant player in the country. (If you somehow missed her performances throughout the tournament, you could have turned to her picking up the award this week for Naismith Player of the Year, or for the Wade Trophy, or for the AP Player of the Year.) But if anyone had been in search of a recap of what makes her so good, it would have been hard to ask for anything more than this: Boston controlling the game in the paint on both ends of the floor, playing with a forceful, impressive grace that is impossible to look away from.
Every part of the game runs through her. Even when she’s not the one taking the shots.
“I mean, we have to play through her,” Staley said of her star. “It doesn't mean that she has to shoot the ball, but every time she touches the ball, she draws a crowd … When we started going into her, playing inside out, more shots from the outside started falling.”
Louisville did what it could to push South Carolina. It was aggressive on the boards—the Gamecocks average 48 rebounds per game and were able to pull down just 36 on Friday. Senior Emily Engstler was a particular force with 18 points and nine rebounds before fouling out. But the Cardinals could not get anything going consistently. Guard Hailey Van Lith, who had scored 20 or more in each of Louisville’s previous tournament wins, was held to just nine. (Credit the defensive job of Gamecocks’ Brea Beal—already known as one of the best perimeter defenders in the country, she made that truly, seriously obvious on Friday.) This is a Louisville team that very much deserved its No. 1 seed, with a tough, pressing defense and the capacity for explosive play from guards like Van Lith. It made quick work of all its previous tournament opponents. But against South Carolina, there was no question who was better.
Which the Gamecocks enjoyed on Friday night. But no one on this roster has ever had a chance to play deeper into championship weekend than this, and these players are not content to stop winning here.
“Last year, we fell short when we lost in the Final Four,” Henderson said. “I feel like this year, it’s a relief right now, and it feels great … We’re going to take in this moment. And we’re not done yet. So we still have unfinished business.”
