COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Dawn Staley's South Carolina Gamecocks, in recent years, have emerged as the standard-bearer in women's college basketball.
They've won two of the past three national titles, have led the nation in attendance for more than a decade and boasted the most impressive winning streaks of the 2020s. The Gamecocks' four consecutive wins over the UConn Huskies, including one in the 2022 NCAA national championship game, further solidified that status.
But Sunday afternoon in Columbia, South Carolina, it was like the Huskies turned the tape back to the 2000s and 2010s, and in the process, they made a statement about this season's team. No. 7 UConn used a vintage performance to throttle the defending national champions 87-58, stunning the basketball world and snapping the No. 4 Gamecocks' 71-game home win streak.
The victory marked the largest road win for any Division I program over a top-five team since 2009, when the Huskies demolished then-No. 2 North Carolina. It is also the Gamecocks' biggest home loss since 2008, which was coincidentally also courtesy of Geno Auriemma and the Huskies in Staley's first season at the helm.
"I don't know what's going to happen today, I said before the game, but I think we're going to be a great NCAA tournament team, because this is in them," Auriemma said, "and it came out today. Can it come out every day? I don't know, but now we know it's in them."
Staley's squad had previously last lost at Colonial Life Arena in December 2020, two national titles ago. For the first time in years, dejected Gamecocks fans headed for the exits midway through the fourth quarter with South Carolina down by nearly 30. Staley deemed the performance a "major implosion," and both she and senior leader Te-Hina Paopao described it as "embarrassing."
"They had their way with us," Staley said. "There's no trying to find a silver lining to it. We got beat. We got beat bad."
"We just got punked today," said Paopao, adding the Gamecocks' defense was "trash" and their problems self-inflicted. "We've just got to do a better job giving effort and being mentally and physically tough."
UConn, an 11-time national champion, arrived in Columbia searching for a signature win, having previously dropped contests this season to Notre Dame, USC and Tennessee, the latter an upset just 10 days ago. The program's three-game losing streak against AP-ranked opponents was tied for its longest over the past 30 seasons, and recent history was working against the Huskies, too: They hadn't won in Columbia since 2018 or beaten the Gamecocks since 2021, and last knocked off a top-five team on the road in December 2018.
But the Huskies obtained their marquee victory of the 2024-25 campaign by dominating nearly every facet of the game, leading from the 2:55 mark of the first quarter on before putting their foot on the gas in the second. UConn went into the break ahead 45-23, marking South Carolina's largest halftime deficit since the 2019 Sweet 16. The Gamecocks didn't get any closer in the last 20 minutes.
"More than anything else, it was evident today that we played to win," Auriemma said, "and that there wasn't any, 'I hope [we don't lose].'"
"We needed to prove that to ourselves, that we could never let up for 40 minutes," said Azzi Fudd, who finished with a game-high 28 points. "We haven't done that yet. And so it was really, really good to see us do it."
UConn maintained the momentum in the third quarter behind a second-half explosion from Fudd. The redshirt junior, who missed almost all of last season with an ACL tear, scored 18 points that period alone and went 6-for-10 from 3-point range on the night.
"This was a big moment for her," Auriemma said. "She hasn't played in a long time, hasn't been in this scenario in a long time. And for her to have the kind of game that she had, this was big. It really goes a long way towards pushing her forward."
UConn's 13-for-28 shooting from the beyond the arc stood in stark contrast to its 26% clip entering Sunday against AP-ranked teams. South Carolina, on the other hand, went 3-for-17 from deep.
But the Huskies beat South Carolina at its own game, too, dominating the rebounding battle 48-29 (the program's worst rebounding margin since 2009) and keeping up inside (36 paint points apiece).
Between that and the havoc UConn created defensively, the Huskies made the Gamecocks pay in transition, where they scored 31 fast-break points to South Carolina's 12. The home squad also generated its second-fewest turnovers of the season (10).
"I thought in those three things, our rebounding, our transition [defense], and our offense, that's about as close to perfect as we've been all year," Auriemma said.
"This has to be our standard here on out," Fudd added.
It has been a historic week for the Gamecocks, but not in a good way. On Feb. 9, South Carolina's 57-game winning streak in regular-season SEC play was snapped by Texas. Now seven days later, the Gamecocks' home winning streak -- fourth longest in DI history -- has been reset to zero. The Gamecocks had last lost twice in three games in March 2019, and their three losses are most by a Staley team since 2020-21.
"Obviously, when you lose like this, there's something else is going on that isn't just about basketball," Staley said. "So we got to figure that out and get back on it. ... We definitely have to get better, and we will."