For Dawn Staley and USC’s seniors, securing road win over UConn just means more

Dawn Staley wanted to secure the “trifecta” for her 2019 recruiting class with South Carolina’s series against UConn.

That group helped South Carolina defeated UConn at home for the first time in 2020, and picked up two neutral-site wins against the Huskies as well — one being the 2022 national championship.

But USC — which has now won four of the last five meetings against UConn — didn’t beat the Huskies in their house until Sunday’s 81-77 win.

“This is one of the things that we hadn’t been able to do, and I’m glad for them,” Staley said. “It’s completed when it comes to playing UConn.”

That recruiting class was No. 1 in the nation at the time and featured Aliyah Boston, Zia Cooke, Brea Beal, Laeticia Amihere and Olivia Thompson. Fifth-year senior Victaria Saxton joined the team in 2018, but has also been present for each victory over the Huskies.

South Carolina has played UConn every game since the 2014-15 season. The Gamecocks were 0-8 before the Class of 2019 arrived, including an Elite Eight loss to the Huskies in 2018.

Since then, each game has come down to the wire or held historical implications. South Carolina’s win over UConn in 2020 marked the first in program history, and the two wins secured in the 2021-22 season were the first time the Gamecocks swept the Huskies when playing them twice in one year.

Sunday’s game — like UConn’s win in Connecticut in 2021 — was decided by four points.

“I think it just says that both programs are pretty great programs and that we’re always going to come to compete,” Boston said. “So everyone should always buy tickets to go watch.”

USC has started to take control of the series. Getting over the hump of beating UConn on the road gets the team closer to evening the all-time series, which currently favors the Huskies 9-4.

“Coach Staley was talking about history here,” redshirt-freshman Raven Johnson said. “She’d never won a game here. My mindset, and the team mindset, we wanted to break history. We wanted to win this for her.”

Sunday was the second road thriller the Gamecocks have played in this season before a sold-out crowd. The team won an overtime game against Stanford inside a packed Maples Pavilion.

USC’s Feb. 12 game against LSU was announced as a sellout in late January.

South Carolina’s often tasked with playing in front of large crowds with the recent success the program’s had, and Sunday’s game held consistent with that model.

“This was a national championship-like game,” Staley said. “The crowd may not be in our favor, but we have to lock in.”

The Gamecocks downplayed the clash with UConn leading up to the weekend, citing the other high-profile road games it had played earlier this season and in previous years.

The victory on Sunday, though, afforded South Carolina the chance to check off another milestone.

Technically, USC still hasn’t won at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs — UConn’s primary home court. But the team is no longer winless against Geno Auriemma in Connecticut.

“That’s all she was talking about,” Johnson said. “So I was like, ‘We need to win this for her.’ ”