First half dooms South Carolina in blowout loss
Lamont Paris understands there will be nights where South Carolina, as he says, plays like the Washington Generals, the group destined to get beat up nightly by the Harlem Globetrotters.
What he can’t understand is the lack of competitiveness, which was evident at times in the Gamecocks’ first loss of the season, 85-53 to Colorado State where the Gamecocks led for just six seconds.
“We did not play well tonight in many aspects of the game. It’s pretty late in the year and I think I did make the understatement of the year. But didn’t play well. We didn’t compete well. That’s what that’s the only thing that really bothers me,” Paris said.
“Our competitive spirit I did not think was where it needed to be in order for us to be able to even have a chance to win.”
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How it happened
Things began to unravel halfway through the first half.
Colorado State, up two at the time, began attacking the paint. Of the Rams’ 40 first-half points, 30 came in the paint en route to 54 for the game.
“I didn’t come into the game anticipating that we would feel like we needed to consider double-teaming the post in one on one situations. It just wasn’t. I have enough faith in those guys. It wasn’t a thing,” Paris said.
“But one on one situations, they’re down there cooking. And so I don’t know, just it was all sorts of ways. It was all sorts of ways so that when you have that, you know it’s hard to stop the proverbial bleeding.
South Carolina, meanwhile, couldn’t buy a shot on the offensive end. The Gamecocks made just seven shots on 28 attempts in the first half, just 2-for-9 from three.
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They didn’t score the final five minutes of the half, watching the deficit balloon to 21.
“It was a perfect storm. That’s a good basketball team. I don’t want to pretend that they’re not. That’s a really good basketball team. They were last year they got a lot of guys back from that team,” Paris said.
“But I think it was it was a perfect storm of not shooting the ball well, not taking care of the ball well, not defending well. Just some basic stuff.”
The Rams, though, would ride the large first-half lead and keep the Gamecocks at arms’ length the rest of the second half. South Carolina ultimately shot 36.4 percent in the second half, 6-for-17 from three.
Three observations
South Carolina needs more of a paint presence–The Gamecocks couldn’t do anything inside, going 5-for-12 on layups and allowing 63.5 percent of their points allowed to come in the paint. Josh Gray and Hayden Brown battling foul trouble didn’t help, but that wasn’t the only issue.
Click for Thursday’s box score
Turnovers are an issue–South Carolina entered Thursday turning the ball over on over 21 percent of possessions and didn’t have a great night protecting the ball against the Rams. South Carolina turned it over 16 times Thursday, 10 in the first half.
“I’m not the smartest guy of all time, but I do know in basketball you score when you have the ball. So you can’t turn the ball over. It’s just a wasted opportunity,” Paris said. “It was some decision-making. It was some just wild carelessness with the ball.”
South Carolina needs more from its guards–The Gamecocks got a combined 19 points from its three-headed guard attack of Meechie Johnson, Jacobi Wright and Chico Carter. Those three had been good to start the year but finished 7-for-27 from the field and 5-for-13 from three.
“Those guys are going to have to play fairly well. One of our premier guys is going to have to have a pretty good game most games,” Paris said. “We can’t have games where they all three are in the tank offensively.”
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Two stats
19 percent: The Gamecocks entered Thursday one of the best offensive-rebounding teams in the country but only brought in nine against Colorado State on 42 misses.
19 points: That’s how many Colorado State had on 16 Gamecock turnovers. The Rams made South Carolina pay for mistakes offensively.
Up next
South Carolina shifts to the loser’s bracket side of things. The Gamecocks will play either Davidson or College of Charleston Friday night at 7:30 p.m.
“Well, if we’re not more competitive than then that that would be really disappointing. If we don’t come out and be more competitive and confident and aggressive,” Paris said. “Once we got down, there was no real fight. I didn’t see much real fight and you know, I told you guys, I don’t recognize that. I don’t, that’s not I’m unfamiliar. That’s uncharted territory for me, because that’s just what I’m used to. And if you go down, you go down swinging. But, you know, I think we had times we did not compete so I would say that we compete overall better.”
