South Carolina-Texas coin flip to decide SEC Tournament seeding

The No. 6 Gamecocks (25-3) and the No. 1 Longhorns (27-2) are both 14-1 in conference play with one game left on the schedule Sunday.

The No. 6 South Carolina women's basketball and No. 1 Texas are both one win away from having their SEC Tournament fate decided by a coin toss.

The Gamecocks (25-3) and Longhorns (27-2) are both 14-1 in conference play with one game left on Sunday. If both teams finish with a win, the SEC stated that a coin flip would take place at the conference office in Birmingham, Alabama, to decide the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in the 2025 SEC Tournament.

Coach Dawn Staley said Wednesday that she thinks "we should've thought a little bit more ahead of this situation knowing that we were bringing a Texas and a Oklahoma into the SEC."

On Friday, after beating Ole Miss on the road and ahead of playing No. 14 Kentucky on Sunday (2 p.m., ESPN) Staley was asked if she was implying there should be another way to break the tie.

"I will say, imagine if it was football and it was a coin flip," Staley said. "Not for who gets the ball first, who gets the first seeding in the national championship. Imagine, imagine. Now I'm not trying to throw the (SEC) commissioner under the bus by any means. It has been part of the tie-breakers for as long as I've been in the SEC and that's what it is."

In football, per the SEC, "in the event of a tie between teams competing for a place in the conference championship game, the following procedures will be used in descending order until the tie is broken":

Head-to-head competition among the tied teams

Record versus all common conference opponents among the tied teams

Record against highest (best) placed common conference opponent in the conference standings, and proceeding through the conference standings among the tied teams

Cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents among the tied teams

Capped relative total scoring margin versus all conference opponents among the tied teams

Random draw of the tied teams

For women's basketball, the coin flip is the third of the tie-breaker scenarios:

Won-lost results of head-to-head competition between the teams.

South Carolina and Texas went 1-1 this season

Won-lost results of the two teams versus the highest seed (and proceeding through the lowest seed, if necessary).

Both teams are the highest seed

Coin flip by the commissioner.

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How to watch South Carolina-Texas coin flip

According to the SEC, the coin flip will be televised live from the SEC office at halftime of the Ole Miss vs. LSU game, which will be broadcast on SEC Network. Tipoff for that game is 4 p.m. ET.

One side of the coin has the Gamecocks logo, the other the Longhorns. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey will toss the coin into the air, catch it, flip it over on the back of his hand and whichever logo is face up will be declared the No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament.

"I look forward to the coin flip at this point because that means we won (Sunday)," Staley said. "It is what it is at this point. We're just going to call up to the coin gods."

Lulu Kesin covers South Carolina athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email her atlkesin@gannett.com and follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @Lulukesin

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: SEC women's basketball: South Carolina-Texas coin flip would be on TV