South Carolina slips past the Citadel despite historically poor shooting night

At this point in the semester, finals are winding down, and students across the University of South Carolina campus are just coasting to the holidays.

Over at Colonial Life Arena on Saturday evening, South Carolina’s men’s basketball seemingly started doing the same. The Gamecocks now head to Clemson for a Tuesday night date with their largest rival following a 71-55 win over The Citadel.

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The primary issue, in the eyes of head coach Lamont Paris, was that the team was unprepared. He said if he could put himself in their shoes, they would be prepared.

“I know how on game day you cannot play. Well, I do know that. I don’t know how you cannot be ready to play on game day,” Paris said. “This is a limited time offer college basketball, I got news for you. It’s a limited time offer … And so I’m just not familiar with guys, multitude of guys not being ready to play a game. That’s a foreign concept.”

An inauspicious opening tip that fell out of bounds set the stage for what became a lackluster 40 minutes of basketball for South Carolina

Defensive struggles inside plagued the Gamecocks early as the Citadel’s Carter Kingbury consistently found his way past Jordan Butler for two. Kingsbury dominated inside throughout Saturday’s contest, scoring a season-high 18 points against the Gamecocks. Entering the contest, he averaged 6.2 points per game.

“I wonder if this is his career high. I hope it was because it would be a nice venue for him to look back and say that his career high was against an SEC team,” Paris said.

Paris specifically voiced frustration with Kingsburys opening six points, where he drove past Jordan Butler with ease twice and backdoored Myles Stute once.

By the time fans got to move down from the upper level at the under-12, the South Carolina faithful found their team in a one-point game with the Bulldogs. A couple of plays later, they found the Gamecocks trailing the nation’s No. 362-ranked team of 365.

Additionally, South Carolina struggled to carry its momentum off its best three-point shooting game of the season against Radford. By the under-eight media timeout, the Gamecocks were 0-8 from the perimeter, trailing by two. At halftime, they were 0-12.

As the half wound down, South Carolina found brief life, going on an 11-0 run. The run put the Gamecocks in reach of its first 10-point lead of the night. However, three misses to end the half kept it just out of reach.

Too add onto South Carolina’s troublesome night, forward Elijah Strong left late in the first half with an apparent left leg injury. Later in the second half, with under four minutes to go, Eli Ellis left with his own leg injury.

“I was disappointed on a lot of fronts, just with with how we came out to start the game, and it continued throughout the game,” Paris said.

Paris called South Carolina’s win over the Bulldogs the closest 16 point win. He hoped nobody looked at the final margin and made assumptions off of it.

South Carolina’s scoring didn’t improve much coming out of the break. Thankfully for them, neither did the Bulldogs. Both teams got off to a combined 0-4 start to the second half, all coming from beyond the arc, until Kobe Knox broke the ice two minutes

However, despite the poor day all around, Paris still found consistency out of his three mainstay starters in Mike Sharavjamts, Meechie Johnson and Knox. The trio of guards each eclipsed 10 points, with Johnson, who reached 1000 career points with South Carolina in the win, leading the way with 19.

“Just super thankful to be back in this building,” Johnson said on the accomplishment. “You know, a year ago, I never really thought I’d be back here. So to be able to get that done, it was great for just myself and everything.”

Unfortunately for the trio, they still couldn’t break the Gamecock’s threee-point woes themselves. As South Carolina faced its 20th straight missed three of the night, Myles Stute rattled one in from the right wing. The make ignited Colonial Life Arena to its loudest of the night as fans searched for positivity in a long Saturday night.

It seemed like the 20th time was the charm for the Gamecocks. Following its first make, South Carolina they went on to make their next two attempts from three. Then, after the game ticked under five minutes, the Gamecocks found their first double digit lead.

After a shooting peformance like Saturday night, the Gamecocks know they need to flush it and focus forward to Clemson.

“Yeah, that’s basketball. You know, shots not gonna fall every single night,” Knox said. “I mean, we won, and we feel good about it, but we just can’t let this bad shooting game carry on to Tuesday.”

Though no point of the game was pretty, South Carolina coasted home from there, taking the 71-55 win

“We were not good. The overall feel of the game was not good by my estimation, but we were good enough at the end of the day. Ultimately, that’s what matters the most,” Paris said.

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