Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk continuing to be ultimate teammate, earning minutes on floor

With so much talent on this South Carolina team, minutes can be hard to come by for bench players. That’s just basketball sometimes.

But after having a great week of practice, Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk earned himself a chance to get into the game and do some good. He played 14 minutes on Saturday, finishing with six points and four rebounds in a 73-69 win over Charleston Southern.

“It’s not always a one to one translation from what you do at practice to what you do in the game. But he did. He had a really good couple of last couple of days of practice,” head coach Lamont Paris said. “It’s just who’s going to do what consistently was going to be how minutes are determined. And today was him. He had the most juice out of that second group of bigs.”

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Bosmans-Verdonk made a few nice plays, including some dunks inside the paint. He went 3-for-4 shooting, his best mark of the season so far.

“Shout out to my guards who fed me the ball,” Bosmans-Verdonk said. “Honestly, finishing the plays is easy when you get them handful wrapped to you.”

He also provided a spark in the rebounding department. South Carolina struggled to crash to the boards in the first half but ended up doing a better job in the second half to win the battle 39-26.

“Sometimes when a team punches, you got to respond and punch back,” Bosmans-Verdonk said. “Coming off the bench, being a part of that second unit to just deliver that punch back. Sometimes it’s necessary and I consider it part of my role.”

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Last year, the 6-foot-9 forward started in 14 games for the Gamecocks. He was one of the big additions from the transfer portal in Paris’ first year. But he didn’t have a great year and saw his minutes slowly dwindle.

“Last season was kind of what it was,” Bosmans-Verdonk said. “Year two, we’ve been on a journey. And I feel like it’s all been part of it — the ups and downs of last year, right now what we’re going through. It’s easy adjusting when you’ve got a team full of selfless guys who want to win. So yeah, it’s really been an honor to be here, and whatever it is, serve my teammates.”

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Now this season, he hasn’t started a single game yet. But that’s fine by him. He knows what his role is now and what he has to do.

“Just to provide a spark whenever I can, that’s kind of my role, and I embrace it,” he said. “We got a super great team, a lot of great teammates. And whenever I can come in and lift some guys up, that’s what I tried to do. So that’s my mindset coming into the game.”

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