DALLAS — Ketara Chapel knew something needed to be fixed.
With teammate Breanna Richardson in foul trouble, the senior forward realized she had to provide a spark in the second half for the Mississippi State women’s basketball team.
Chapel scored four key points in the third quarter to help MSU battle back from a 14-point deficit, its largest of the game. Unfortunately, MSU couldn’t sustain the spark Chapel provided in a 67-55 loss to South Carolina in the NCAA tournament’s national championship game before a crowd of 19,229 at the American Airlines Center.
“I just had the mind-set that I didn’t want to lose,” Chapel said. “I tried to go out there and do everything in my power to win a championship. I was trying not to lose and going out there and playing hard, like we usually do.”
Chapel hit a jump shots off an assist from Morgan William to cut South Carolina’s lead to 45-40 with 3 minutes, 38 seconds remaining in the third quarter. She added two free throws later in the period to keep the deficit at five.
South Carolina’s lead ballooned to eight (52-44) at the end of the quarter, but MSU (34-5) trimmed the advantage to 54-50 on a jump shot by Jazzmun Holmes with 6:53 remaining. The Bulldogs had an opportunity to cut deeper into the deficit, but Victoria Vivians missed a 3-pointer. Richardson rebounded the miss only to have A’ja Wilson deny her with one of her four blocked shots.
The Bulldogs went 2-for-8 following Holmes’ jump shot. Wilson helped seal the deal with a driving score with 3:17 to go, a move in the lane with 2:19 left, and an offensive rebound putback in which she was too quick for McCowan with 1:39 remaining.
“We cut it back, fought, fought, fought, got it back to 54-50, had possession,” MSU coach Vic Schaefer said. “Sometimes this group can get caught up in a moment. Again, I’m sure, too, everyone who is watching us for the first or second time, they think, ‘Man, that’s a really bad shot.
“I’ve seen our kids make some of those shots that people think may be really bad shots. In that moment, we probably could have gotten a lot better shot. You could get that shot any time in the shot clock. We had one broken play then the other one we just went off and left it. They took it and went and laid it in.
“That’s kind of where the game got away from us. We had it to 54-50, had the crowd going. We were right there. Maybe it took all we had to get to that point and get it back after being down so bad. We didn’t have anything left. It just comes down at that point, you got to execute. We didn’t execute.”
Chapel downplayed MSU’s 66-64 overtime victory against four-time reigning national champion Connecticut as a factor in the team’s performance against South Carolina. Still, it was hard to dispute the Bulldogs, save for a few spurts, didn’t look anything like the team that snapped the Huskies’ 111-game winning streak Friday night.
“We just didn’t play our best tonight. South Carolina came out and had all of the energy and punched first,” Chapel said. “They just had the more want-to to win the game.”
Actually, MSU had a fast start just like it did against South Carolina in a 64-61 loss on Jan. 23 in Columbia, South Carolina. Vivians hit her first two shots and Teaira McCowan scored on a layup off an assist from Richardson to stake the Bulldogs to a 7-1 lead. That momentum quickly evaporated, though, as the Gamecocks repeatedly beat the Bulldogs off the dribble. South Carolina didn’t attempt a 3-pointer in the first half thanks in part to an attacking brand of basketball that ultimately helped it earn a 42-20 edge in points in the paint.
Wilson, who was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player, led the charge with 23 points and 10 rebounds.
“I think our biggest thing against Stanford (in a 62-53 victory in the national semifinals) is we came out flat and our energy wasn’t there,” South Carolina junior guard Kaela Davis said. “We just made it a point that we weren’t going to get the same start. With Mississippi State, it is so tough to battle back against them, so we just wanted to make sure we had a high energy and we kept tempo high. We found a good, comfortable pace, and I think we stuck with it.”
Schaefer said South Carolina was the aggressor and his team didn’t have the same energy or level of efficiency it had against UConn.
“They get going downhill, boy, and it’s hard,” Schaefer said. “If y’all noticed, we had probably six or seven block calls, where typically we’re getting charges on all those. … I think every one of them was right. We were just a half a step slow today on every rotation. We just couldn’t get there.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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