The heroic bucket from Cardoso kept South Carolina’s undefeated season alive and sent the Lady Vols home with a devastating defeat.
The last-second South Carolina victory also caught Tennessee great and current Las Vegas Aces forward Candace Parker off-guard as she Facetimed with her teammate, a former South Carolina standout.
Wilson posted on Twitter (X) a screenshot of the two talking on Facetime, as she said that Parker called Wilson thinking the game was over only to realize it most certainly was not after Cardoso’s shot.
It’s never a good idea to celebrate until the final buzzer, especially in a sport like basketball where so much can change with one bucket.
Parker probably won’t hear the end of this for quite some time, as Wilson both got a big victory for her alma mater and a good laugh out of Parker’s confident Facetime call.
The Alabama men’s basketball team will have its SEC home opener on Tuesday night when they welcome in the South Carolina Gamecocks.
Both the Tide and the Gamecocks were able to collect wins this past Saturday with Alabama getting a road win over Vanderbilt and South Carolina taking care of business at home against Mississippi State.
Alabama currently sits a 9-5 on the season after facing one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the country while South Carolina is an impressive 13-1, but their non-conference slate was not near as difficult as the Tide’s.
Below is everything you need to know to catch the action between Alabama and South Carolina from inside Coleman Coliseum.
Here is a look at how social media reacted to Clemson’s excellent win over rivals South Carolina.
Brad Brownell and the Clemson men’s basketball team remained undefeated as they took down rivals South Carolina 72-67, ending the Gamecocks undefeated season.
The Tigers trailed 7 heading into the half (30-23), but that didn’t stop this team from rallying to beat their bitter rivals. The team fought hard behind 13 second-half points from Chauncey Wiggins to reach 8-0 on the season as arguably the hottest team in college basketball right now.
Starting your season this way is as good as it can get for a team, but this win makes it that much sweeter. When you and your biggest rival both have tremendous starts to your season, and you walk away with the big rivalry win, it is the best feeling for players and fans.
Here is a look at how Twitter/X reacted to Clemson’s big win.
Clemson head coach Brad Brownell updated the injury status of multiple players ahead of Clemson vs. South Carolina.
Brad Brownell and the Clemson men’s basketball team have a huge matchup Wednesday as the Tigers host undefeated rivals South Carolina for what is shaping up to be an excellent matchup.
Forward Jack Clark has been dealing with lingering injuries, but played through it until recently. Clark did not participate in the Tigers’ win over Pittsburgh, and it sounds like his status is still up in the air ahead of this matchup against the Gamecocks.
“We’re still kind of trying to figure it all out. I would say he’s doubtful for this game. I’m going to get with Brad (Crowe) right before practice and just see what it looks like. It’s been challenging for him. Just hasn’t been able to kind of get all the way there. He’s had some steps back, if you will, so we’ve just got to kind of deal with it day-to-day,” Brownell said.
Along with Clark is Alex Hemenway, who is dealing with a lower leg injury. Hemenway has some time to go before the team believes he’ll be back to full strength.
“Jack and Alex, that’s been really challenging. I anticipated those guys being probably two of our top six guys. It’s just, they both haven’t been able to do as much,” Brownell said.
Clemson won’t be at full strength for this matchup, but they’ve been banged up throughout the season. Clemson faces South Carolina on Wednesday, Nov. 6, at Littlejohn Coliseum with tipoff at 8 p.m., televised on ACC Network.
It bares repeating: Dutch Fork won their season opener 95-0 over Lamar.
On one hand, scoring 95 points in a high school basketball game is incredibly rare. It is an incredible amount of points to score. But to then hold an opponent to no points is…well…it just doesn’t happen.
And it doesn’t happen with this kind of margin between the two teams.
In a comment on social media, one person questioned the sportsmasnhip of the winning school, saying that Dutch Fork probably used a full-court press the entire game. There is no tap-dancing around that tweet, which implies that Dutch Fork ran up the score and didn’t let up.
Interestingly enough, the program responded to the tweet and defended their head coach:
No. Our coach is not like that. We dropped back after the first quarter. The score couldâve been much higher.
Well, that will make Lamar feel better…’The score could’ve been much higher’…
Last season, Dutch Fork went 14-10.
There were no stats for the game given that the poor high school student charged with being the scorekeeper first ran out of ink and then developed severe arm cramps midway through the first quarter when trying to keep up with the action.
Gregory âGGâ Jackson II was considered the best collegiate prospect in the 2023 recruiting class.
Gregory âGGâ Jackson II was considered the best collegiate prospect in the 2023 recruiting class. But his draft outlook doesn’t look great.
Jackson, who helped team Team USA to win a gold medal at the FIBA Americas Under-18 Championships in 2022, opted to reclassify and forego his senior year of high school, becoming the highest-rated recruit in program history for South Carolina.
He averaged 15.4 points and 5.9 rebounds per game, earning SEC All-Freshman honors, before declaring early entry for the 2023 NBA Draft. He is the youngest player eligible to hear his name called in this draft class.
By all accounts, an 18-year-old who performed at such a high level in the SEC would typically project as a potential lottery pick. But there are also valid reasons why Jackson may slide on the night of the draft.
Here is what one college coach told NBA reporter David Aldridge (via The Athletic):
“Heâs got to have self-awareness as to what the next phase of his career is, because he did speed up the process. ⊠mentally, was young, immature.”
NBA draft expert Jonathan Givony has more (via ESPN):
âHe gives very little effort, looking very upright in his stance, not covering ground well, struggling to get over screens and looking lethargic with his reaction time, providing next to nothing as a rim-protector due to his poor 6-11 wingspan ⊠South Carolina’s coaching staff hasn’t been able to coax much effort or physicality out of him, with his body language looking very concerning at times.â
South Carolina was outscored by a whopping 18.4 points per 100 possessions when Jackson was on the court, per CBB Analytics, but outscored opponents by 8.7 points per 100 when he was not. That swing (27.2) was the largest of any Division I menâs college basketball player to log at least 500 minutes last season.
Unfortunately, there were major concerns for Jackson on both offense and defense.
He can create his own shot but he shot just 31-for-119 (26.1 percent) on his jumpers off the dribble, per StatsPerform, also the worst among high-volume top prospects.
His defense wasnât great, either. Opponents were 16-for-26 (61.5 percent) when defended by Jackson in the paint, per Stats Perform, and 18-for-28 (64.2 percent) when he was credited as the nearest defender in the restricted area. Both were near the worst among top prospects.
The pre-draft process also wasn’t kind to Jackson. Adam Finkelstein wrote about what he saw during Jacksonâs Pro Day (via 247 Sports):
âGG Jacksonâs workout led to some questions. Jackson looked noticeably winded less than 10 minutes in and, while the progression of his face-up skill-set was evident, the overall pace of the workout ended up being slower than most others. Given some of the questions that emerged at South Carolina this year with regard to his efficiency, body language, and overall maturity, this showing didnât do anything to reassure NBA decision-makers.â
That was an unfortunate time for his illness, which provides helpful context to his performance, and the reality is that Jackson still has a ton of upside.
But the numbers donât paint a positive picture of his outlook on draft night. Put it all together with the catch-all metric box plus-minus and Jackson (-0.5) had the lowest mark among all top prospects.
In fact, per Bart Torvik, there are only five players on record since 2008 to hear their name called on draft night after posting a negative box-plus minus during their collegiate careers. Only one was selected in the first round and only two were selected in the top 40.
Your clues: Visiting a national champion basketball coach, seeing an ND grad/prominent ACC AD, and seeing his QB1.
A quick search of âMarcus Freeman is everywhereâ on Twitter shows that the Notre Dame head football coach certainly isnât scared to get up and go. One minute heâs in South Bend and the next heâs at the White House. Whether its recruiting, doing public speaking, or something in-between, Freeman is certainly active.
During the first week of May, Notre Dame’s athletic webpage started a blog to track Freeman’s whereabouts as he is booked with events nationwide this month that aren’t directly related to on-the-field activities.
So what was the Notre Dame head coach up to in the last few days? Throwing some lines with his starting quarterback was just one of the things he was up to.
Aliyah Boston found a savvy way to make sure she got as many photos as she could on the WNBA Draft orange carpet.
WNBA Draft prospect and former South Carolina standout Aliyah Boston didn’t want her orange carpet moment to go without a few good snapshots.
Rather than rely on official photos to get shots out quickly, Boston asked reporters on the red carpet if they’d be able to take some photos of her and some of her fellow athletes.
She also had interest in acquiring some of the photos that someone took of somebody taking the photos with her phone.
It’s a really savvy way of making sure you’ve got all the photos you need on such a major night for your career.
She’ll soon transition to her professional career, and she’ll have plenty of snapshots to remember this important night for the rest of her life. We call that a picture-perfect situation.
The reaction to Angel Reese taunting Caitlin Clark proved Dawn Staley’s point about double standards.
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After South Carolinaâs bid for a perfect season came up short Friday, head coach Dawn Staley had a message for the media in her postgame press conference.
âWatch what you say.â
Staley had been hearing the ways her predominantly-Black team was being talked about in certain circles, and she planned to address it regardless of the gameâs result.
Before the subject could get lost in the moment, a reporter asked Staley for the truth about her team, which was often described as a bully.
âThe truth about our team ⊠Weâre not bar fighters. Weâre not thugs. Weâre not monkeys. Weâre not street fighters. This team exemplifies how you need to approach basketball on the court and off the court. And I do think that [is] sometimes brought into the game, and it hurts.
âSome of the people in the media, when youâre gathering in public, youâre saying things about our team and youâre being heard. And itâs being brought back to me.â
"We're not bar fighters. We're not thugs. We're not monkeys. We're not street fighters. … So watch what you say when you're in public and you're talking about my team in particular."
What Staley described is racism, at worst. At minimum, itâs an implicit bias common in sports: Black women are the aggressors in proximity to their non-Black counterparts. In basketball, that type of bias influences how athletes are covered, coached, officiated, and ultimately perceived by the public.
"I'm too hood, I'm too ghetto. Y'all told me that all year. But when other people do it, y'all don't say nothing. So this is for the girls that look like me."
The great ambassador for womenâs basketball that she is, Staley should have been applauded for bringing this issue to the forefront. As the sport continues to grow in popularity, itâs something better addressed earlier than left to fester and become normal.
There was no better person to speak about it than a Black woman who has experienced these biases first-hand, as both a player and coach. Already a Hall of Famer, Olympic gold medalist and two-time champion, Staley doesnât have anything left to prove. Sheâs simply someone who has seen and heard everything there is to be seen and heard about basketball. If she says something is happening, we should listen.
Instead, Staley was doubted by people like columnist Peter Vecsey and called a sore loser or a victim who was playing the race card â sentiments that did nothing but prove the exact point she was making.
Guarantee, nobody in the media has ever referred to South Carolinaâs players as monkeys. What nonsense!
People would rather live with their unchecked biases than look themselves in the mirror and admit they harbor harmful thoughts, which is sad and the type of behavior that allows racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and so forth and so on to exist.
Seeing it play out the way it did — just in the same way Staley pointed out how her team was talked about — put a real damper on what was otherwise an incredible Final Four.
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Quick Hits: LSU-Iowa officiating gets slammed … Wrestlemania madness! … The “ghost fork” makes its regular-season debut … and more.
As Iowa celebrates taking down one of the best women’s college basketball teams of the last decade, they’ll have to look back on the astounding game that Clark had to help them get to the national championship game.
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She really had one of the tournament’s best-ever performances on Friday night.
Caitlin Clark is the first player to score 40+ against South Carolina since 1995 â LSU's Cornelia Gayden. #ncaaW
As the game’s broadcast put it, “the mythical mastery of Caitlin Clark” will continue as the team faces LSU in Sunday’s 2023 women’s NCAA tournament championship game.
"The Mythical Mastery of Caitlin Clark continues."
Behind 41 from Clark, Iowa advances to the championship game against LSU. South Carolina was the defending champion and had won 42 straight. pic.twitter.com/1hBqgBq2ad
