BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — With 3:39 to go, and South Carolina women’s basketball backed into the corner it seemingly lives in now — looking for answers to a struggling offense while the grains of sand tumbled out of the season hourglass — Dawn Staley stopped her veteran point guard.

She put her hands on Raven Johnson’s shoulders during a dead ball, and kept them there for about half a minute before play resumed.

What was the advice from this final mini pep talk of South Carolina’s 54-50 Elite Eight win over Duke?

“Bring us home,” Johnson said was Staley’s message. “She said, ‘You’ve found a way to win. Lead them Raven, lead them.’ We’ve been here before, and she trusts us. Honestly, she was letting me call the plays.”

At this point, South Carolina is completely accustomed to the pressure cooker of a close game with the season at stake. Take the Sweet 16 victory by four points over Maryland, or last year’s Sweet 16 squeaker, an Elite Eight game a year ago within five points in the final three minutes before a late run or even the National Championship Game against Iowa, a two-possession margin late.

All games where another team could have crumbled, or where one lapse in execution could have been the missing Jenga block that caused the whole tower to tumble.

How has this group sidestepped every landmine the last two years?

Winning ugly is not a token phrase or a cliche. It’s a skill, and one Staley’s team has mastered.

“At this point it’s not going to look pretty,” Staley said. “Some of it’s not going to look as smooth as us coaches and players envision or how you practice, but you certainly have to get down and play the kind of game that’s presented in front of you, and we’ll do that.”

Sunday was the ultimate example of this. Duke, a team that builds its identity on dragging opponents into the mud, turning games into rock fights and winning as ugly as possible — its Sweet 16 final score was 47-38 — executed its game plan perfectly.

Double the post catches. Apply ball pressure wherever possible. Make life as difficult as possible for everyone playing off the ball. Make the game as physical as possible.

A South Carolina team that wants to play a free-flowing transition style of basketball was forced to do the exact opposite, a hardwood version of expecting to show up to the Opera and having your ticket exchanged for a rock and roll concert.

By the middle of the third quarter with Duke leading by six, it was clear. South Carolina was either going to have to beat Duke at its own game, or lose.

“I’m just so proud of my teammates for digging deep and continuing on because we could’ve laid down and taken whatever was happening to us,” Adhel Tac said. “We pulled through, we fought harder. I’m just really proud of my teammates.”

Heading to Tampa, just 80 minutes away repeating as National Champions, South Carolina now stands at a crossroads.

There is the unshakable reality that it has not played anywhere close to its best basketball three games in a row. That each game has gotten a little tighter, the offense has not adjusted well to its struggles and very little feels reliable on that side of the ball.

Some teams peak at the perfect time, and others do whatever South Carolina is doing right now.

And yet, it has not burned them. The fortitude of a team with the ultimate winning DNA — the type of grit and experience that leads the head coach to tell the starting point guard just to find a way to win without needing to expand — has delivered this group back to the Final Four.

Baffling as it may seem, South Carolina has earned the right not to panic even when the situation looks bleak.

“We were calm, honestly,” Johnson said. “We were good. I think it was just about defensive stops and intangibles. Rebounding, not giving away extra possessions, things like that got us over the hump of winning the ballgame.”

This is the dichotomy for the next week, the double-edged sword of this particular tournament run.

They have to play better to win the National Championship, or maybe not? In theory the level of play from the last three games will not be enough when the competition reaches its highest point, but in the same breath, the Gamecocks have answered every time.

South Carolina has made a skill of winning ugly. Heavy emphasis on the ‘winning’ part.

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