That is quite a story about Chris Gedney, the first UConn scholarship player, who ended up trying to leave the school and in a sense got her lackluster coach Wanda Flores fired when the coach kicked her off the team against AIAW rules and UConn canned Flores over the stink. Someone named HuskyNan
wrote about it back in 2004 for the old Rivals BY version.
Only one thing doesn't check out, because I know that UConn's first two credited games against USCar occurred in the 2007-09, and the two games listed on the southern swing trip were a win over Duke and a loss to UNC. So did the game between UConn and USCar in mid January 1980 go unrecorded somehow? Nan says that Gedney played against South Carolina. Odd. But you say you do remember Gedney raining points on the Gamecocks.
No listing on USCar site records either, so maybe it was a scrimmage?