South Carolina banking on balance and depth in title game - ESPN

CLEVELAND — With 47 seconds left in the third quarter of Friday night's national semifinal against NC State, South Carolina slings the ball around the perimeter. It ends up in transfer guard Te-Hina Paopao's hands. She launches a 3-point shot, and the Gamecocks' bench players stand and cheer with their arms in the air as it drops through the net. Holding her follow-through, Paopao jogs back down the court.

When NC State's River Baldwin catches the ball in the lane at the other end, she's met by Sania Feagin and Ashlyn Watkins. Watkins swats the ball off the backboard.

The shot clock is off. South Carolina passes the ball around until Bree Hall takes a 3-pointer and swishes it through the bottom of the net as time expires in the third quarter. She's the seventh member of the top-seeded Gamecocks to score in the quarter. Though their lead was just one point at halftime, it balloons to 24 heading into the fourth.

This is what South Carolina does, what it has done all season. What it will try to do Sunday afternoon against Iowa with a national championship on the line. The Gamecocks dominate, and they do it with depth.

During a remarkable women's basketball season elevated by individual stars, including Iowa's Caitlin Clark, UConn's Paige Bueckers, LSU's Angel Reese and USC's JuJu Watkins, the Gamecocks are undefeated, balanced and deep. Coach Dawn Staley routinely goes nine deep in the rotation. In their first four NCAA tournament games, they had four different leading scorers and three different leading rebounders. In three of those four games, the Gamecocks' leading scorer didn't even start.

Iowa made the championship game on the back of its superstar, Clark (with more than a little help from Hannah Stuelke on Friday),