Gamecocks will be in Final Four for the third time in a period of six tournaments by winning the Hemisfair Region final. They will face Stanford in a national semifinal.
Zia Cooke’s 16 points were South Carolina’s best selection (26-4), which opened a 14-2 lead. Saxton and Destanni Henderson both finished with 12 points and Aliyah Boston and Laeticia Amihere provided 10 points each.
Audrey Warren scored 13 points for sixth-placed Texas (21-10), who were looking for their third consecutive defeat in the tournament. The highlight Charli Collier got four points, throwing 2 in 10 of the field.
The Longhorns threw 23 percent of the field, including 3 out of 15 in 3-point attempts. In addition to Warren’s 5 to 8 shot, the rest of the matches were combined from 8 to 44.
Texas went goalless in the fourth quarter, while the Gamecocks scored just 10 points in the final 10 minutes. South Carolina ended with a 46-33 rebound advantage.
The Longhorns, playing under first-year coach Vic Schaefer (who was a former South Carolina rival when training in the state of Mississippi), were in Elite 8 for the first time since 2016.
Until this tournament, Texas had not won three consecutive games since a series of five games that ended on January 3.
Stanford 78, Louisville 63
Lexie Hull scored 21 points and had nine rebounds in the seed, Stanford, who overcame a 14-point handicap in the second half to beat second-placed Louisville 78-63 in the Alamo region final of the NCAA women’s tournament in Tuesday in San Antonio.
The cardinal (29-2) won his 18th consecutive game and qualified for the Final Four for the 14th time under the command of Tara VanDerveer, the most winning coach in the history of women’s basketball, with 1,123 career victories.
Stanford will face South Carolina in a national semifinal on Friday in San Antonio. The Gamecocks won the Texas sixth division 62-34 on Tuesday to win the Hemisfair Region.
Ashten Prechtel scored 16 points out of 6 out of 6 field shots and Kiana Williams scored 14 points and had a record game of five assists for the cardinal. Teammate Haley Jones had 10 points and 10 rebounds.
Dana Evans led Louisville (26-4) with 24 points and hit 6 out of 8 in the 3 point range. No other player reached the double-digit score for the Cardinals, with Kianna Smith’s eight points being the second best total.
Louisville led 45-29 at the start of the third quarter and climbed 12 before Stanford went on a 13-0 run to take the lead on a Williams jumper on the track with 2:23 remaining in the period.
The teams switched the lead for the last minutes of the quarter before Hailey Van Lith made a jump with six seconds left to put Louisville at 50-48 in the fourth quarter.
Prechtel hit a 3-point basket with Stanford’s starting ball in the fourth period, leading to a 10-0 streak, and the cardinal continued to dump it.