SACRAMENTO, Calif. — We have three conference rematches in the eight games making up the 2026 Sweet 16. It is pretty common to have intra-conference games once you get into this part of the NCAA tournament. However, it is rare for the higher-seeded team — a No. 1 seed, at that — to be the team hoping to avoid a season sweep.
And yet, that’s what we have in the Sacramento Region 4 matchup between Oklahoma and South Carolina, where the Sooners won their high-energy overtime meeting in January.
The Sooners’ roster is built on a group of experienced players and a lot of youth. Of the 11 players on their roster, three are seniors and five are freshmen. The season has been a lot of learning for the roster as the upperclassmen try to bring along the talented newcomers. For a team that made the Sweet 16 last year, the growth of head coach Jennie Baranczyk‘s squad has made this year’s group stand out.
Many saw the emotion Baranczyk was feeling after the win over South Carolina on national television. The broadcast included a shot of the head coach saying “We’re fucking back,” in the team’s post-win huddle.
The overtime win was much needed after a tough stretch for the Sooners, during which they lost three consecutive games to ranked opponents. However, Baranczyk feels that the emotion came not from the result on the court, but from the togetherness they displayed despite the struggles they’d had coming into the game.
“The emotion came because we’re a young team trying to navigate life together,” Baranczyk said in a press conference on Friday. “You have this center that’s really good. You have a playmaker in Payton that’s really good. You have Sahara Williams, who has just this incredible energy and presence about her.
“And then you mix it with an Aaliyah Chavez, who was a fairly ball-dominant guard coming in, learning how to play with really great players around her. At that time, the emotion was more about us playing together, and you could feel that togetherness.”
What sets Oklahoma apart from many other SEC teams is its pace. Per Her Hoops Stats, the Sooners rank first in Division I in possessions per 40 minutes and fourth in points per game. That pace causes many problems for opponents and is something Baranczyk has emphasized since she arrived in Norman. She wants to always play with five scorers on the floor and a style that people want to watch.
The team’s anchor, center Raegan Beers, wasn’t initially sure about how she would fit in Baranczyk’s system and pace. While the Oregon State transfer was weighing her transfer destination options, she didn’t feel like she was fast enough for what Baranczyk was pitching her.
“I was very hesitant,” Beers said in a press conference on Friday. “I was like, ‘Jennie, I’m not that fast. I don’t know if I can play that fast. You all play really fast.'”
Baranczyk pulled film of Beers doing the same things at Oregon State as she would be called on to do for Oklahoma, assuring her she would be a fit. This helped to convince Beers, now in her second year in Norman, whose 18 points and 14 rebounds in the regular-season matchup with South Carolina were massive.
“Now I love playing fast,” Beers said. “When we slow down the practice, I’m like, ‘What are we doing? Like, let’s get going.’ It’s been cool seeing that. Aaliyah coming here, obviously, and then Zya elevating the speed of our game 100 percent, when we have guards who can push the ball like that and then keep our pace in the halfcourt, we’re a tough team to guard.”
This year, a lot of that pace has come from freshman point guard Aaliyah Chavez. She stepped onto the Oklahoma campus as the best recruit in program history. She has lived up to the hype, but she also has learned a great deal throughout the season.
What has impressed Baranczyk the most about Chavez this season is her consistency. She feels many freshmen have good games and bad games, but Chavez has managed to stay herself even when shots aren’t falling. Baranczyk loves her daily approach and how she has become more vocal in their huddles.
For Chavez, she feels one of the things she has learned is how to handle the pace of the Sooner offense. She has started to gauge when it’s time to speed up and when to throttle back, which helped Oklahoma win the first matchup with South Carolina.
“I think I’m just growing each and every game,” Chavez told media on Friday. “Some days you have to push as fast as you can, and some days you have to slow it down. Obviously, I think a huge part was that South Carolina game, the last time we played them, because we were sped up a little too much in the first half … I determine how fast we need to go and how slow we need to go. I definitely think that’s been a huge challenge, but I’ve been growing each and every game.”
The Gamecocks, despite the regular-season loss to Oklahoma, are not thinking about revenge — that is in the past. Their main priority is advancing to the next round. They are focused on the team in front of them and playing to the standard they have set over multiple years, which has made them the standard-bearer in the SEC.
One of the people who has upheld that standard for the Gamecocks is senior guard Raven Johnson. After South Carolina’s win over LSU in the regular season, head coach Dawn Staley said Johnson is one of the players she is going to miss the most from her time coaching the Gamecocks. She feels Johnson is comfortable in her own skin, something she doesn’t see in many young people nowadays.
“What I like about Raven is, it’s not often that young people are comfortable in their skin at a young age,” Staley said in a press conference on Friday. “She’s very comfortable in her skin. And if you’re not comfortable in your skin, you’re going to be uncomfortable around Raven, because she’s going to say some things that are unexpected but are pretty on point. So I like that. I like the fact that she is unpredictable but true to herself.”
Johnson’s teammates agree with Staley and feel it’s her personality that brings out the best in them. They feel Johnson is always true to herself, builds a lot of trust with her teammates, and values the relationships. Sophomore forward Joyce Edwards says that while Johnson is goofy, she always pumps up her teammates and instills them with a ton of confidence.
For Johnson, much of this mindset stems from what she learned from teammates in the past. She played alongside Aliyah Boston and Kamilla Cardoso. She walks by the A’ja Wilson statue outside Colonial Life Arena. She knows the standard they’ve set and learned the importance of having pro habits.
“I remember when I was a freshman, they were hard on me,” Johnson said at a press conference Friday. “I think they were great leaders. They always talked about pro habits. They always say you need to take good habits everywhere you go because those are contagious and they carry on to other people. So I always carry that with me and always instill that into my head because that’s actually true.”
In the first matchup, South Carolina’s starting post players struggled. Edwards and Madina Okot combined for just 18 points and nine rebounds while shooting 29% from the floor. Both Edwards and Okot have played very well since that game, and each has grown in different ways this season.
Edwards has developed very quickly this year, a development that had to be accelerated after the Gamecocks lost Chloe Kitts to an injury before the season started. She has focused on correcting problems in her game from last year and playing more freely. This has allowed her to find more success and improve her scoring average by 7.2 points.
Okot, meanwhile, has thrived in the Gamecocks’ system despite her limited basketball experience. She didn’t start playing basketball until she was in college in Kenya, and Staley is impressed by how she has played this season with all the expectations that come with wearing the garnet and black. Staley feels she is still in the training ground to be great, but knows Okot wants to be great for anyone she plays for. She also feels her success is a major reason they have reached this point.
The Gamecocks know Friday’s game will be a challenge. The Sooners’ pace will be an issue, as will the gauntlet of shooters complementing Beers in the post. However, they feel that if they play to the South Carolina standard, the outcome will go their way.
“We just gotta come here and do what we do,” Raven Johnson said. “Play to a standard that we know we can play and bring our practice habits to the game. I think it’s all about advancing and beating the team that’s in front of you.”
