{"id":236037,"date":"2026-03-25T16:23:43","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T16:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/236037\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T16:23:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T16:23:43","slug":"south-carolina-womens-basketball-first-look-at-the-sacramento-4-sweet-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/236037\/","title":{"rendered":"South Carolina women’s basketball: First look at the Sacramento 4 Sweet 16"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sacramento 4 regional is set. Take a first look at the bracket in the Big Tomato.<\/p>\n

The Teams<\/p>\n

#1 South Carolina<\/p>\n

First round: defeated #16 Southern 103-34
Second round: defeated #9 Southern Cal 101-61
History vs others: Oklahoma (2-4), TCU (1-0), Virginia (3-3)<\/p>\n

To say the Gamecocks cruised through the first two rounds is an understatement. The Gamecocks notched their largest tournament win ever against Southern, and then handed Southern Cal its worst loss of the season. Every round of the tournament stands on its own, but South Carolina has looked the strongest of the four teams remaining in the Sacramento 4 regional.<\/p>\n

NEW! Message board for South Carolina Women\u2019s Basketball<\/a>! \ud83c\udfc0<\/p>\n

#4 Oklahoma<\/p>\n

First round: defeated #13 Idaho 89-59
Second round: defeated #5 Michigan State 77-71
History vs others: South Carolina (4-2), TCU (30-11), Virginia (2-0)<\/p>\n

Oklahoma held off a strong Michigan State push in a game that never got any flow because of fouls. It was the Sooners\u2019 best win since upsetting South Carolina in late January. Now they get another shot at the Gamecocks.<\/p>\n

#3 TCU<\/p>\n

First round: defeated #14 UC San Diego 86-40
Second round: defeated #6 Washington 62-59 (OT)
History vs others: Virginia (0-1), Oklahoma (11-30), South Carolina (0-1)<\/p>\n

Olivia Miles is averaging a triple-double in the tournament, and TCU needed all of her heroics to outlast Avery Howell and Washington in the second round. TCU has looked both dominant and shaky at different times in the tournament, which could also apply to the Horned Frogs\u2019 entire season.<\/p>\n

#10 Virginia<\/p>\n

First Four: defeated #10 Arizona State
First round: defeated #7 Georgia 82-73
Second round: defeated #2 Iowa 83-76 (2OT)
History vs others: TCU (1-0), Oklahoma (0-2), South Carolina (3-3)<\/p>\n

Virginia is this year\u2019s Cinderella team, even if the Hoos are an ACC team. The Cavaliers beat Arizona State, Georgia, and Iowa over a six-day span, with the last game being the biggest upset of the tournament. Virginia hadn\u2019t made the Sweet 16 since 2000 before this run.<\/p>\n

The Stories<\/p>\n

A rematch and a Cinderella. Oklahoma handed South Carolina its only regular-season SEC loss, and now the Gamecocks get a do-over. In the other game, after much hand-wringing over the lack of Cinderella teams in either tournament, Virginia became the first women\u2019s First Four team to make the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n

Those are just the A1 stories. Other themes include South Carolina going for its sixth consecutive Final Four, the second-longest streak ever; TCU is making its second consecutive, and second-ever, Sweet 16 appearance; Kymora Johnson is going from an unknown to a household name; plus, there are swan songs for Raven Johnson, Ta\u2019Niya Latson, Raegan Beers, and Miles.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfc0 GamecocksW newsletter: WBB coverage delivered straight to your inbox<\/a>!<\/p>\n

The Sacramento Schedule<\/p>\n

Sweet 16: March 27-28
Elite Eight: March 29-30<\/p>\n

Game times<\/p>\n

Friday, March 27 \u2013 UCLA vs Minnesota (7:30 ET), Duke vs LSU (10:00 ET)
Saturday, March 28 \u2013 South Carolina vs Oklahoma (5:00 ET), TCU vs Virginia (7:30 ET)
Sunday, March 29 \u2013 3:00 ET
Monday, March 30 \u2013 9:00 ET<\/p>\n

The Other Side<\/p>\n

The Sacramento 2 Region is highlighted by a rematch between LSU and Duke, who met earlier this season. LSU won that game 93-77 in Durham, dropping the Blue Devils to a dismal 3-6.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But then Duke regrouped and won 17 straight games. It\u2019s fair to say these aren\u2019t the same teams they were back then, and Duke would like nothing more than a revenge win to prove this version of Duke is the real version.<\/p>\n

Despite being the four seed, it was a bit of an upset when Amaya Battle hit a 13-foot jumper with one second left to give the Golden Gophers a 65-63 win over Ole Miss. Minnesota, which played crazy fourth quarters all season, overcame an eight-point deficit in the final 10 minutes.<\/p>\n

Minnesota plays heavily favored fellow Big Ten member UCLA, which beat Minnesota 76-58 at Williams Arena in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sacramento 4 regional is set. Take a first look at the bracket in the Big Tomato. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122,8859],"class_list":["post-236037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-womens-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}