The South Carolina Gamecocks men and women’s basketball teams have made the NCAA Final Four in the same season.
Must Read: NCAA Tournament's best story keeps getting better
Today is a great day for South Carolina basketball, a school who rarely has success in the sports that people actually care about.
But this year, the Gamecocks are in the spotlight, and for good reason.
Like we’ve mentioned before, South Carolina’s men’s team has been the best story of this year’s NCAA Tournament. They’re the third 7-seed to make the Final Four in the last four years, but only Connecticut in 2014 won it all.
They will play 1-seed Gonzaga on Saturday at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
There’s nothing extraordinary about South Carolina’s women. They were expected to be here. They came into the tournament as a 1-seed, and after beating Florida State on Monday, the Gamecocks women are now 31-4, and they’ve won nine straight games.
That winning streak includes winning the SEC tournament, and in the conference finals they beat another Final Four team in Mississippi State 59-49.
This is their second Final Four appearance in the last three years.
They will play 2-seed Stanford (32-5) on Friday at American Airlines Center in Dallas.
But despite how extraordinary it sounds, this feat isn’t as uncommon as you may think.
South Carolina is the sixth school in the last nine years to accomplish this. And since in the NCAA women’s tournament started in 1982, it has been done 13 times. It happened five years in a row from 2002 to 2006. And believe it or not, it’s not just UConn every time.
The Gamecocks are also the third SEC school to accomplish this, along with Georgia in 1983 and LSU in 2006.
Men and Women reaching Final Four in same season
1983: Georgia
1999: Duke*
2002: Oklahoma
2003: Texas
2004: UConn*
2005: Michigan State
2006: LSU
2009: UConn
2011: UConn
2013: Louisville*
2014: UConn*
2016: Syracuse
2017: South Carolina
Only four times have both the men and women advanced to the national championship game with Duke in 1999, UConn in 2004, Louisville in 2013, and UConn again in 2014.
But only UConn in 2004 and 2014 has won both the men’s and women’s national championship in the same season.
Each Gamecocks team will have their work cut out for them if they want to make history, but given the dynasty that is UConn women’s basketball, it’s going to be much tougher for the women.