South Carolina makes tweak to normal scoring approach in blowout win over Presbyterian

So much of South Carolina’s identity this season has been and will continue to be three-point shooting. There’s no shying away from that. It’s what this team is best at doing.

But there are going to be nights when the shots aren’t falling as consistently. It’s going to happen to all teams at one point or another, and the Gamecocks are no different.

So when the outside shots that came in bunches in the first two games weren’t coming at the same rate to start, head coach Lamont Paris thought it would be a good time to try something else.

Instead of continuing to live and die by the three, Paris wanted his players to attack the rim, which then could lead to some points inside as well as some open looks. Once that happened, things started to click for South Carolina as it stormed past Presbyterian in an 81-61 win on Wednesday night.

“I think early in the game, I look at our first six threes, we were maybe 0-for our first six or seven threes, but the quality of them was great,” Paris said. “Just encouraged a couple of guys, if they had an alley to go to the basket. Let’s get to the basket. Put some pressure on the rim. And then when we did that, we created some open ones. … I think just the concept of trying to get to the rim and then generate some offense that way was definitely something that we talked about.”

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The Gamecocks (3-0) shot a lower than normal 37 percent from the field and 33 percent from three-point range in the first half. The real saving grace that helped build up a 19-point lead at the break was Grant Polk, who had nine first-half points and went 3-for-3 from deep. The freshman guard finished with 12 points and was perfect from the outside with four made threes.

Defensively, the overall play seemed to be a lot better as the Gamecocks held the Blue Hose to a season low in points as they shot 42.4 percent and went 0-for-8 from three-point range.

“I thought we did a pretty good job on that, because that floppy action, particularly when you got a guy like (Carl) Parrish that’s coming off and he can make hard shots he did a couple of times,” Paris said. “But that guy can get going in no time. So I thought we did a decent job of making those shots a little bit more difficult overall.”

Eventually, the shots started to go in for the Gamecocks as they were at a 75 percent clip near the midway point of the second half, though not shooting as frequently from behind the arc.

Some of it was due to misses, but they weren’t taking nearly as many outside shots as they had in previous games. South Carolina went 8-for-25 from three-point range. It had plenty of driving finishes to the rim, in some cases ending with free throws. It went 25-for-32 at the line.

“We emphasized that a lot for the past two weeks, week and a half, just pump faking a guy in the air, finishing to him,” said Hayden Assemian, who made his first career start and had five points in 15 minutes. “It worked better tonight. I got a foul off on one. But we can keep working on those, and it definitely will help us because we’re not as big of a team.”

The Gamecocks shot 13-for-27 (48.1 percent) in the second half and 24-for-57 (42.1 percent) for the entire game. They also took much better care of the ball with a season-low six turnovers.

In addition to Polk, South Carolina had three others finish with double figures. Mike Sharavjamts led all scorers with 13 points on 4-of-7 shooting in 24 minutes. Myles Stute and Jordan Butler each had 11 points.

Up next: The Gamecocks will be back in action on Tuesday, Nov. 18, when they host Radford at Colonial Life Arena. Tip-off is at 7 p.m. on SEC Network+.

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