South Carolina women beat Stanford 62-53 in Final Four

SC players huddle during a practice session for their NCAA Final Four tournament college basketball semifinal game Friday, March 31, 2017, in Glendale, Ariz.

HollywoodLifers, who are you rooting for in this game, North Carolina or Oregon? Gonzaga will be one of the favorites to do so, but will have to get past a SC team that has answered every challenge thrown its way in this tournament.

Here we are on April 1, and SC will be playing in the Final Four to try to advance to the Championship.

Where: University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Ariz.

Now that everyone’s bracket has been thoroughly busted, we can finally sit back and enjoy the final three games of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament.

The victor of the game will face the victor of Gonzaga and SC in Monday’s national championship game. Mark Few’s program answered back with a 7-0 spurt of their own in just over two minutes of game time.

Sindarius Thornwell, South Carolina.

Gonzaga advances to the NCAA title game for the first time in school history and will play the victor of North Carolina and OR on Monday night. “To be playing the last game of the year is just insane cool”.

No. 1 NORTH CAROLINA (-4.5) vs.

SC wasn’t content to let Gonzaga have all the fun, as their less-heralded offense looked to have no problem against the stingy defense of the Bulldogs. Gray finished with 18 points and eight rebounds, hitting five straight shots in the second half at one point and finishing the night 7 of 14 from the field.

Berry says the key will be to getting involved in the game so he doesn’t think about it too much.

If Thornwell keeps playing like the SEC player of the year as voted by the coaches, anything might be possible.

“It’s been great”, Thornwell said.

SC erased Stanford’s nine-point halftime lead when the Gamecocks went on a 19-4 run that took up most of the third quarter.

With 13 upsets in the tournament to this point, it’s only a mystery what’s to come in the final three games left to play.

“When things got tough we banded together and pulled through”, Williams-Goss said.

The Gonzaga Bulldogs are no longer a cute story from the Pacific Northwest; they’re now one win away from securing their first-ever national championship. SC was playing the tournament without injured starting center Alaina Coates.

“Actually, before that bet, we had quite a bit of money on OR on the money line, but nothing like this”, Andrews said. “The fact that it was going up and down is the way we want to play and like to play and when we’re at our best”.

“They said we wasn’t battle-tested”. I’m proud on how hard they fought. Boucher hurt his knee in the Pac-12 tournament semifinals but Jordan Bell has stepped up and been the rim protector while also filling the rest of his role as a rebounder and inside scorer.

The first half’s biggest storyline had to be Przemek Karnowski’s eye injury.

“I had blurry vision, a little bit of a shadow”, Karnowski said.

“It hurt really bad when it happened”, said Samuelson, who was scoreless in 25 minutes.

Stanford couldn’t get into a rhythm in the second half. Chris Silva had 13 points and 13 rebounds.

Alanna Smith got Stanford within 53-50 with 2:10 to play, but SC scored the next five points to force a Cardinal timeout and the Gamecocks secured the victory. 2, 3 and 4 seeds in the East region. It had won four NCAA Tournament games total before this season. Given what they did against Xavier, drilling 12 threes in 24 attempts under vast pressure to finally make a Final Four, the bet here is they rise to the occasion. Collins had six and Silas Melson had two for the Bulldogs. “Why not go win it all?”