BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Maryland women’s basketball has a pretty good sense of the gargantuan task in front of them: A Sweet 16 date with the big, bad No. 1 seed and defending national champions.

They’re “aggressive” and “very disciplined,” Terps senior guard Shyanne Sellers said Thursday. South Carolina is “really talented, obviously well-coached, deep, athletic,” coach Brenda Frese added.

The odds are stacked against No. 4 seed Maryland heading into its 5 p.m. matchup today against the Gamecocks at Legacy Arena.

It required a pair of heart-rate-spiking Terps wins to get here.

There was the halftime deficit against Norfolk State in the Round of 64 that required a 3-point thunderstorm (6 makes on 8 attempts) by Sarah Te-Biasu to separate on the scoreboard. Alabama required a tad more pearl clutching. Maryland fell behind by as many as 17 points in the first half before scratching, clawing and counting on Te-Biasu to help it survive two overtimes.

Kaylene Smikle was asked Thursday if there’s a lesson to be gleaned from last weekend.

“We learned that we’re capable of anything,” the junior guard and Terps leading scorer (18 points per game) deadpanned. “If we put our minds to it, no matter when things get hard, we play 40 minutes. After that overtime, overtime, we’re still going to get teams. I feel like we just have so much confidence in each other.”Perhaps confidence has been rediscovered just in the nick of time. Maryland was lights-out the first half of the season, ranked as high as No. 7 by The Associated Press thanks to a 14-0 start.

By December, they were considered a Final Four-caliber team.

A pair of home losses to unranked Illinois and Nebraska in February, then losing mightily in the Big Ten Tournament to Michigan team they beat weeks earlier, simmered some of that deep-run discourse. But Maryland’s resilience last weekend looked more like that first-half squad — showcasing an ability to score in bunches and the athleticism to hang defensively with any blue chip program.

“This is how [Frese] wants to play,” Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley said. “When you are able to play your style of play, you feel comfortable going into every basketball game. They will shoot the 3-ball. They will drive it down your throats. They have some bigs that can command the paint. They play up and down. They get up and down the floor. They want the game in the 80s and 90s and 100s if they can.”

Maryland also outrebounds opponents 40.6 to 31.9 per game. South Carolina’s margin is 42.4 to 34.1.

Gamecocks senior guard Te-Hina Paopao said that, beyond the physicality of two teams having made it this far, tonight’s game could be decided on the boards. “We’re going to have to key on boxing out,” she said, “and not letting them get offensive boards and just being real physical and real aggressive.”

Still, it will take every ounce of confidence Smikle referenced to pull off an upset against South Carolina, which has four total losses over the past three seasons and is playing in its 11th consecutive Sweet 16.

The Gamecocks are defined by their depth. Joyce Edwards and MiLaysia Fulwiley are their two top scorers, averaging 13.2 and 11.8 points per game. Neither is in the starting lineup. “It’s a deep team that is able to kind of wear you out with their depth,” Frese said. More than half of their total scoring comes off the bench (41.5) — an oddity good for the best mark in the country.

“On the flip side,” Sellers said, “I think we can be really disciplined. I think we can make them work. I think it’s going to be a battle of the boards. We rebound very well. They rebound very well. So at the end of the day, it’s going to come down to who wants it more.”

South Carolina junior forward and Southeastern Conference Tournament Most Valuable Player Chloe Kitts applauded Maryland’s tenacity to win a bar fight with Alabama. “We just need to … go out there and play like it’s our last game,” Kitts said. She cracked a smile, “It’s not going to be, but yeah.”

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