South Carolina hopeful to regain confidence after bludgeoning of Stetson

This game wasn’t going to magically fix everything. South Carolina was supposed to win and win handily, which it did. At the very least, it showed what this team is capable of doing.

After a few tough weeks, the Gamecocks exorcised some demons in an 82-51 win over Stetson over the weekend, their largest margin of victory this season. Granted, it came against the worst opponent on the schedule thus far. But this was a “get-right” game, and it served that exact purpose.

South Carolina played well on both ends of the floor to win convincingly. With four games left before conference play starts, the hope is that this can help turn the tide and get into a groove.

“We’ve talked a lot about being growth-minded and being focused on improvement,” head coach Lamont Paris said. “… There was some growth. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but there was definitely some growth.”

Offensively, South Carolina shot 54.5 percent from the floor, its second-highest mark in a game this year. It also went 12-for-27 from three-point range, good for 44.4 percent on the day.

“I think that game was perfect for us, just to be able to see some go through,” Eli Ellis said. “We’re a really good shooting team. If you watch practice and how much these guys work as a whole, it doesn’t make sense that we don’t make shots in these past few games, but I think that’s what we needed.”

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Before Saturday, the Gamecocks had gone five straight games of shooting less than 30 percent from deep. For a team that plans to rely heavily on its outside shooting, this was a return to normalcy of what it expects to do.

Paris is hopeful that this shooting performance will give the team the confidence it needs to do this more consistently.

“Hopefully, this will be a good reminder to them of what we can do,” he said. “And it’s not some sort of record that we ever broke, but I thought the quality of shots were good. I think our quality of shots have been pretty good overall for the season.

“But one thing that we were doing with what we were doing offensively today, you are a little more prepared. You do expect that the shot may come a little bit more, and what we were doing today, and then some of the other stuff, but still high-quality shots.”

Following an overtime loss to Virginia Tech earlier last week, Paris wanted to see defensive growth and be better in ball screen coverage responsibilities. That was his top focus heading into this most recent game against Stetson.

Safe to say things went better than he expected. South Carolina held the Hatters to 51 points, the lowest point total it has allowed all season. Stetson shot 32.1 percent overall and 19 percent from three.

The Gamecocks also dominated on the boards, winning the rebound battle 41-20. They also held Stetson without a made field goal over the final eight minutes of the game to finish out strongly.

“That is always good,” Paris said. “But anytime you hold a college basketball team to those low numbers in terms of field goal percentages and only 51 points, you’re going to give yourself a great chance to have success.”

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It’s just one game, and again, it came against a team that’s ranked 344th of 365 teams in KenPom. It’ll go down as a Quad 4 win. However, this was exactly what South Carolina needed.

With school finals this week, the Gamecocks will be off for a few more days until their next game against The Citadel on Saturday night. Much like Stetson, the Bulldogs are lowly ranked, only worse as the third-lowest team in the KenPom rankings at No. 363.

It’s going to be another game that they should win no problem, and it probably won’t change anyone’s opinion one way or another. But it’s another chance to build some momentum before the competition picks back up one more time in non-conference play next week against in-state rival Clemson.

“I think that’s what we needed these next two games,” Ellis said. “We need to see some go in, build some confidence, and then play off of that, and then believe in our game throughout the rest of the season.”

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