OU women's basketball 'looking forward to' seeing South Carolina again in Sweet 16

It’s been two months since OU beat South Carolina in an overtime thriller in Norman.

The win was Oklahoma’s best of the season. Heck, it might be the best win by the program in over a decade. And now, the Sooners have a chance to beat the Gamecocks again, but this time on a much bigger stage.

Fourth-seeded OU will face one-seed South Carolina on Saturday in the Sweet 16 in Sacramento. And despite Oklahoma having already proven it can beat South Carolina, it’s a big underdog. The line is up to 17.5 for the Gamecocks.

“Well, experience can’t hurt you, right? It can only help you,” OU coach Jennie Baranczyk said. “It wasn’t too long ago we also got beat by 40 against South Carolina and then we got beat by 30, and then obviously you know what happened here this year. So for us, you’ve got to play every minute. If you go against a team like South Carolina or anybody from here on out, you’ve got to play every single possession.”

A big reason why the Sooners were able to upset South Carolina earlier this season was due to Aaliyah Chavez. The freshman point guard had arguably her best performance of the season, scoring 26 points, including five 3-pointers in overtime.

OU will likely need a similar type of performance for Chavez on Saturday if it wants a chance to win.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Chavez said. “We’re going to get some rest, recover, watch film and have some good practices, and we’ll be ready for them. That overtime game against them was huge and really fun. We played our brand of Oklahoma basketball, and my teammates had full confidence in me every time I shot — that’s what I’m going to try to do again next game.”

The Sooners will have to play their best game of the season to beat South Carolina for a second time. They are well aware of that. South Carolina is one of the best teams in the country, and one of the favorites to not only reach the Final Four, but possibly win the national title.

“It’s not like we played this perfect game and we played South Carolina and it’s not like they played a perfect game and we just got them,” Baranczyk said. “That game was a long time ago. We’re both different. We’ve both grown a lot at this point… You’ve still got to show up, and you’ve still got to show up in every possession. We can’t have this many turnovers, can’t give up free possessions, and we’ve got to lock in a little bit.”

If OU falls to South Carolina in the Sweet 16, it wouldn’t mean the season is a failure. Getting back to the second weekend of the tournament was the expectation for this year’s squad. And there’s no shame in losing to a program like South Carolina, just like there was no shame in losing to the eventual national champions in UConn last year in this same spot.

But OU is wanting to raise the bar. Under Baranczyk, the program has won a tournament game all five seasons. It’s hosted the tournament in three of those seasons. And it’s now made the Sweet 16 in back-to-back years.

Now, it’s time to take another step.

“I think for us, this is our expectation now,” senior Payton Verhulst said. “Like, this is our bar. Obviously, we made the Sweet 16 last year, and our season didn’t end the which we wanted going from there. So I feel like for us, we knew we wanted to get to this point for sure, and this was, like, the bare minimum. I think we put a lot of work in in the off-season and the summer, as a lot of teams do, but I think for us, there was never a doubt in our mind that this was where we wanted to be, and we’re going to keep going, so we’re going to continue to get better and have fun.”

OU and South Carolina will tip off at 4 p.m. CT on Saturday on ESPN.