Inside Zachary Davis' game-winning shot and aftermath of it all
With 15.8 seconds to go, Ta’Lon Cooper’s free throw rimmed out. Texas A&M’s Wade Taylor IV went coast to coast, driving in on Jacobi Wright and hit a layup with 9.7 seconds to play. Tie game.
Instead of calling a timeout, South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris trusted his five players on the court to go out and handle business. There was no panic in his mind. He knew they could do it.
“It means that he believes in us and it gives us confidence being on the court and just the maturity of everybody on the court,” Zachary Davis said in a Garnet Trust exclusive interview. “We have leaders on the court. When coach Paris isn’t saying something…just certain people on the court can take the coaching spot while we on the court. So it just gives us extra confidence knowing that our coaches don’t really have to worry about those things. And we have players on the team that can help.”
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Wasting no time, the inbound pass came to Meechie Johnson. He slowly came across mid-court, then kicked into high gear and blew past a defender. Aggies big man Anderson Garcia stood in Johnson’s path to the rim, so there was no chance he’d get by him. But he had the IQ to make the smartest play of the night.
Johnson weaved around Garcia and dished to a wide-open Davis inside for the go-ahead layup, a shot that would be the difference in a 70-68 win for the Gamecocks on Wednesday.
“Meechie was dribbling the ball up court, he hit them with a little hesitation to get by,” Davis said. “And we practiced and practiced getting into the right spot. And I just saw that my man helped and I was in the right spot at the right time. Right away layup for me. Meechie made the right pass.”
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The aftermath of the win was just the beginning of what would become an insane night for Davis.
Shortly after the win, the team returned to the visiting locker room. The players waited for Paris to come in. Once he got in there, though, the party began.
“We didn’t have our speaker in there so we were chilling in there at first,” Davis said. “But when we win, we dance. Coach Paris came in there and started doing a little break dance for us. So we had a good time.”
But there wasn’t a whole lot of time to waste. South Carolina was halfway across the country in Texas and had to get back to Columbia that night. So the team left the arena and got on a flight to head back home.
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Once they got back to Columbia, it was only 2:30 in the morning. No big deal. But even after the postgame meal, Davis still found himself hungry at this time of night.
His choice? Waffle House.
“I was hungry at 2:30 so I got some food,” Davis said. “I didn’t go to sleep until like four o’clock.”
Running purely on fumes and adrenaline, Davis didn’t have much time to sleep and woke up early the next day. But it wasn’t because he had practice or anything basketball-related. Instead, he had an exam at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday morning.
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Davis admitted he made it to class on time, despite the night he had just endured. But when he got there, he was greeted with a hero’s welcome.
“I had some classmates say good game, great shot on the layup,” Davis said. “They were like, ‘Just keep winning. We’ll see y’all in March.’ So I’m like, I’ll see y’all in March.”
And in the midst of all this, Davis’ phone continues to blow up as he is still working his way through all of the messages he’s received since hitting the game-winning shot.
“Almost but not all the way there yet,” Davis said. “Everybody just hitting me up, telling me keep your confidence keep playing defense, good rebounding and doing everything that you can do to help the team win and be successful. So I’m going to keep doing that.”
