TAMPA — There was a different level of comfort up on the Final Four dais at Amalie Arena for the Texas Longhorns and reigning champion South Carolina Gamecocks. Texas Coach Vic Schaefer, ruddy as ever and zipped into a gray sweatsuit, kept his head bowed while his players spoke next to him, gnawing away at the inside of his lip. He alternated between looking bashful when a compliment was lobbed his way to antsy, as if he was itching to get back to his game tape.

Schaefer has been here before, in 2017 and 2018 when he led Mississippi State to the national semifinals. But his players have not, so he offered two pieces of advice for surviving Final Four weekend: If you have an hour to yourself, take a nap, and don’t forget to have fun.

“I want them to enjoy this. You guys don’t know this, every time they walk in a room somewhere, there’s something there waiting for them. It’s a box. It’s a pair of shoes. It’s warmups. It’s a bag,” Schaefer said. “They can’t wait to leave here, go back to the hotel because they think there’s going to be something there for them.”

Coach Dawn Staley and her South Carolina crew were a trifle less giddy, less earnest, mixing seriousness with quippy jokes because, at this point in the season, what left is there for the weightiest voice in women’s basketball to say?

Asked another state-of-the-game question, Staley didn’t need to hear the full query about whether she appreciates the extra challenge of having to work the transfer portal while coaching a team to the Final Four.

“Yeah, [I appreciate it]. I’ve got ADD, so it stimulates me,” Staley said, cutting the question short and offering a wry smile. “It stimulates my ADD.”

Top seeds Texas and South Carolina may have their similarities as defensive-minded teams who don’t mind earning their pay in the paint, but they’re approaching Friday’s matchup — a rare fourth meeting between the new SEC rivals this season — from opposite ends of an experience spectrum.

The Longhorns stormed into their first Final Four since 2003 despite their near-refusal to shoot three-pointers and carry with them such a deep appreciation for how difficult it is to get to this stage that Schaefer’s voice cracks when he talks about it. The Gamecocks have won three titles in the past four years and are saddled with the burden of meeting their own high standards. They keep reminding reporters, and themselves, that despite suffering — egad — three regular season losses this year, their most since the 2020-21 season, and winning their previous two games by just four points each, they’re actually still pretty good, thanks.

“We know what we can do. We’ve done it before,” South Carolina forward Chloe Kitts said. “… We’re here for a reason. We play at South Carolina for a reason. We’re at the Final Four for a reason, so we just need to believe in ourselves and believe in our team.”

There isn’t much left to discuss when preparing to play a team for the fourth time, a process the Gamecocks’ MiLaysia Fulwiley said was so familiar it was “awkward.” South Carolina won, 76-50, at home Jan. 12; Texas won a 66-62 game at home Feb. 9; then the Gamecocks stifled the Longhorns so emphatically in a 64-45 win in the SEC tournament championship March 9 that Schaefer and his team call parts of the game tape “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

The tactical takeaway isn’t anything dramatic — Texas scored just six points in the second quarter of the conference title game. The Longhorns shot a season-low 28 percent from the field in their regular season loss. In their win, they shot 44 percent from the field and star wing Madison Booker had 20 points, the most she has scored against South Carolina this season.

“When you play a great team … you can’t have that five-minute issue of zeros,” Schaefer said, “and you certainly can’t survive 10 minutes of it.”

The Longhorns will need Booker to be on attack, then, because they rank 351st of 353 Division I programs in three-point attempts, a fact that has made most analysts pick against them. They will have to generate offense somehow against South Carolina’s relentless defense, which undoubtedly will pack the paint.

The Gamecocks’ strength has long been their depth, their unending waves of scorers, wily defenders and the country’s most productive bench. But the flip side can be inconsistency, and South Carolina has singed its fingers pulling wins from the fire the past two games. Freshman standout Joyce Edwards scored 22 points in the first round but just 15 — total — in the next three. Fulwiley, the SEC’s sixth woman of the year, had 23 points against Maryland in the Sweet 16 but just five against Duke in the Elite Eight. Staley couldn’t trust her bench against the Blue Devils and needed her starters to score all but nine points.

Those tendencies to fall out of focus are even more dangerous against an opponent so familiar with South Carolina’s top scorers and so stringent on defense — Texas hasn’t given up more than 61 points in the NCAA tournament.

“You probably have to put a little bit more emphasis on being able to stay organized when they take your first and second option away,” Staley said. “… They do a really good job of making you go a little bit deeper into your offense. You’ve got to make sure that you know what we’re doing and it’s not just, you know, happenstance or chaotic.”

Both Schaefer and Staley make the tactical side of their fourth meeting this season sound simple: it comes down to execution, especially on offense. But both of their teams know that it’s the off-court elements, after so many battles, that will have just as much impact.

“There’s a saying that we’ve been living by since the tournament started,” Texas point guard Rori Harmon said. “Once talent meets talent, it basically doesn’t really matter anymore. It’s about preparation and who’s going to step up on the biggest stage.”