South Carolina saw its perfect season come to an end on Friday night when the Gamecocks fell to Caitlin Clark and Iowa in the Final Four.
Coming into the outing, this showdown was billed as a battle between two of the best players in the country: Clark and Aliyah Boston.
In the end, Boston struggled with foul trouble for most of the night and was largely a pedestrian as her team had its 42-game winning streak and its season come to an unceremonious end.
Dawn Staley tried what she could to stop Clark, but in the end even her next-level strategizing couldn’t temper a 41-point explosion from college basketball’s biggest star.
While South Carolina missing the title game is obviously disappointing, it wasn’t all bad news for the Gamecocks. One of the school’s cheerleaders’ photos went viral on social media afterwards.
It started with the main cheer social account posting some content from the evening, to much acclaim.
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From there, fans identified one particular cheerleader and sleuthed their way onto her personal page. At that point, virality ensued.
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This obviously isn’t an isolated incident. The same thing happened on the Iowa side, with one of their cheerleaders’ provocative photos going mega-viral after the fact as well.
That has been something of a reoccurring pattern throughout both the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, with cheerleaders from Miami and from Creighton earning a ton of attention in recent days.
The photos speak for themselves. https://t.co/I7anrPxXZD
— Game 7 (@game7__) March 31, 2023
Big picture, while South Carolina’s season ended in disappointing fashion, there is no shame in losing at the Final Four level.
You can’t win a title every year – even if you are as good as Staley and the Gamecocks consistently are.
Will South Carolina be able to bounce back next season and reclaim their spot atop the college basketball world? Time will tell, but either way their cheerleaders will be there to cheer them on every step of the way.
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A graduate from the University of Texas, Anthony Amador has been credentialed to cover the Houston Texans, Dallas Cowboys, San Antonio Spurs, Dallas Mavericks and high school games all over the Lone Star State. Currently, his primary beats are the NBA, MLB, NFL and UFC.
