February 26, 2002

On senior night for 10th-ranked South Carolina, Columbia native Shaun Gortman stole the show with 24 points, eight rebounds and five assists as the host Lady Gamecocks soundly defeated Ole Miss 82-58 Sunday afternoon in the final regular season game ever at Carolina Coliseum.

The Lady Gamecocks (22-5, 10-4 SEC), who are set to move into a new arena to start the 2002-03 season, locked up a second place finish in the SEC with the win for the school’s best ever conference mark. USC will receive a first round bye as the second seed in next weekend’s SEC Tournament in Nashville, Tenn. South Carolina will play its first tournament game Friday.

Ole Miss falls to 11-16 overall and 3-11 in the SEC with Sunday’s loss.

Gortman, with her team leading by just one point four minutes into the first half, scored 10 of her team’s next 11 points to help spark a 14-8 run to give South Carolina a 22-15 lead. Gortman hit two straight three-pointers, sandwiched around an athletic steal and breakaway lay-in bucket during her offensive outburst. On the day, Gortman was 10-of-16 from the field and a sharp 4-of-7 from behind the three-point line.

Ole Miss, though, stayed close throughout the remaining minutes of the first half, due in part to the hot shooting of guard Ally Kelly. Kelly scored eight of her 11 points in the first half, cutting the USC margin to 34-27 at the intermission.

But it was South Carolina who came out of the locker room with a purpose for the second half. South Carolina blasted Ole Miss with a 15-1 spurt in the opening 5:02 of the half to stretch their lead to 49-28 and put the game out of reach. Junior forward Jocelyn Penn, who came off the bench today as USC started its five seniors, score seven of her 23 points during the Carolina run.

Carolina would enjoy a lead as much as 28 on two occasions, at 58-30 and 70-42, before Ole Miss scored six straight points down the stretch to cut into the final margin.

“We were much more aggressive today,” said USC head coach Susan Walvius, comparing her team’s solid effort against a loss last Thursday at Auburn. “We did a good job of getting to the foul line. We knew what was on the line for us today. It was a great effort.”

Walvius, who has engineered one of the best turnarounds in college basketball at South Carolina, shifted the attention to her senior class upon their final game in front of the home fans.

“It’s really a credit to our players. I’m real, real proud of them.”

Petra Ujhelyi added eight points and nine rebounds for USC, who snapped their first two-game losing skid of the season with Sunday’s impressive performance.

Carletta Brown paced Ole Miss with 16 points on 6-of-15 shooting while Von Kirk added 12 points for the Lady Rebels.