NCAAW: UCLA slays South Carolina, snapping 43-game winning streak

The women’s college basketball season is starting to get wild, with several ranked teams, including No. 1-ranked South Carolina, falling in the season’s third week. Here’s a look back at the biggest and best happenings:

Irish, Bruins secure statement wins in Southern California

This weekend, four teams ranked in the top six nationally met in Los Angeles, with USC hosting Notre Dame on Saturday and UCLA welcoming South Carolina on Sunday.

In both games, the lower-ranked team made a statement. First, as Edwin Garcia recounted, the Fighting Irish invaded a sold-out Galen Center and took down the Trojans, 74-61, fueled by the guard tandem of sophomore Hannah Hidalgo and senior Olivia Miles.

Then, the Bruins not only defended their Southern California turf, but also became the first team to defeat the defending national champion Gamecocks in 44 tries. No. 1 South Carolina went down—hard.

UCLA raced out to a 15-2 advantage and never looked back, winning 77-62 for the program’s first victory over a No. 1-ranked team. While the Bruins benefitted from a hot shooting afternoon, with the team shooting 47.6 percent from behind the arc and junior guard Londynn Jones, who entered the game shooting 24 percent from 3, going 5-for-5 from deep, it was a complete victory for the home team. As South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley put it, “That was beautiful basketball by UCLA, beautiful on both sides….We ran into a buzzsaw today.”

UCLA made the visitors uncomfortable, not only preventing South Carolina from flexing their traditional interior advantages but also forcing the Gamecocks’ bigs into major scoring struggles. Conversely, South Carolina couldn’t do the same to UCLA junior center Lauren Betts, who finished with an 11-point and 14-rebound double-double, along with four assists and four blocks. Jones led the Bruins with 15 points, while freshman guard Elina Aarnisalo scored 13 points through fearless-yet-steady play.

The outside shooting of sophomore guard Tessa Johnson and senior guard Te-Hina Paopao was the only saving grace for an otherwise stagnant South Carolina offense. Johnson scored 14 points from off the bench, while Paopao went 4-for-4 from 3 as she led the team with 18 points. The Gamecocks could never get their feedback machine—where defensive stops turn into easy scores—going. As such, the South Carolina run that most observers expected never materialized. UCLA pushed the margin to 21 points at the break and never allowed South Carolina to threaten in the second half.

Don’t forget what Northern Iowa did

Three weeks into the 2024-25 season, Northern Iowa owns the nation’s biggest upset, toppling No. 8 Iowa State on Wednesday night. It was the program’s first top-10 win.

Fifth-year senior guard Maya McDermott was the engine driving the Panthers’ upset. She scored 37 points, shooting 66.7 percent from the field and 75 percent from behind the arc. She also added five boards, four assists and three steals. Fellow fifth-year senior guard Kayba Laube was her co-pilot, draining five triples as she scored 21 points.

The pair’s performance was all the more impressive as, just the day before, they learned that their teammate and roommate, senior forward Grace Boffeli, would be out for the season with a torn ACL.

Peak performances

These players joined Maya McDermott, Hannah Hidalgo, Olivia Miles, Londynn Jones and Lauren Betts in authoring some of the most excellence efforts from the past week: