Gallery: Gamecocks drop opener in Charleston

On3 imageby:Gamecock Central11/17/22

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The Gamecocks couldn’t overcome a poor offensive night, getting drubbed by over 30 points against a good Colorado State team.

GamecockCentral was there to capture it. Here’s Thursday’s photo gallery by Montez Aiken.

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First half dooms South Carolina in blowout loss

by Collyn Taylor

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.

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