The Auburn women's basketball team raced out to an early lead, but couldn't hold on as the Tigers fell to the No. 2 South Carolina Gamecocks, 74-58 Thursday night, Jan. 21.
“We knew it would be a tough game,” said Auburn coach Terri Williams-Flournoy. “South Carolina’s the number two team in the country. Dawn Staley is a very good friend of mine. She’s doing an excellent job. You can’t help but to be happy for her. It’s a tough matchup. They’re big inside. We changed a few things to stop the inside game, but at the end of the day, you’re not going to stop that inside game. They did a very good job.”
After a 12-5 start, 10 straight points off the bench from freshman guard Janiah McKay capped off by a Katie Frerking 3-pointer gave Auburn an early 15-12 lead with 2:28 to play in the first quarter.
“[Janiah] played well,” Williams-Flournoy said. “She shot the ball well early on. She didn’t shoot the ball as well later in the game. Janiah is a freshman. She’s going to have ups and downs. For us, she’s continued to play hard and doing what we ask her to do.”
However, Auburn’s momentum would fade as South Carolina’s Alainna Coates began to find her touch on the inside as the Gamecocks outscored Auburn 20-5 in the second quarter to take a 33-20 lead into the locker room.
Auburn (12-7, 2-4 SEC) had no answer for South Carolina’s size in the second half, and the Gamecocks ran away with the game once they buckled down defensively, holding the Tigers scoreless for more than eight minutes.
“No one’s going to lie down and die,” said South Carolina coach Dawn Staley. “We knew that Auburn would have a run. We just didn’t know where it was going to come from. We did a really good job on [Brandy] Montgomery and not allowing her to get off. When you pay so much attention to their leading scorer, other people have the tendency to step up, and that’s what [Janiah] McKay did for their team. What we did was bear down and just try to make it more difficult for her once she started to score a little bit more for them.”
South Carolina shot 51.9 percent from the floor in this game with 36 of their 74 points coming from inside the paint. Coates led the way for South Carolina with 17 points and 10 rebounds on eight for 10 shooting. Frerking was the high-point scorer for Auburn netting 17 points of her own.
After a brutal stretch over the past six games that featured five ranked opponents, Auburn’s next game will be against the 9-10 Arkansas Razorbacks on Sunday, Jan. 24 at 3 p.m. in Auburn Arena. And although Auburn’s most challenging regular season tests are behind them, the Tigers must remain focused if they hope to get back into the thick of things in the SEC.
“We have to be ready to play for every single team in the SEC,” said Williams-Flournoy. “They’ve had some huge upsets, some teams beating teams that probably aren’t supposed to be beating teams, but that just speaks to the strength of the Southeastern Conference. There’s no light side coming. We have to be ready for every game.”
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
