South Carolina wasn't ready to play ... after having a week off from game action

It’s only December, but the excuses have already started to pile up for South Carolina. First, it was tight rims at The Greenbrier, then it was the Thanksgiving layoff, now it’s not being ready to play.

Not being ready to play … after a week-long break due to final exams. The Gamecocks got the job done, beating The Citadel 71-55 on Saturday, but as head coach Lamont Paris bluntly put it, they weren’t good and didn’t look ready to go.

“I don’t know how on game day you could not be ready. I know how on game day you could not play well; I do know that,” Paris said. “I don’t know how you could not be ready to play on game day when there’s—this is a limited-time offer, college basketball. So, I got news for you, it’s a limited-time offer.”

Coming into the day as a 23.5-point favorite, South Carolina found itself tied with the Bulldogs by the midway point of the first half. It didn’t build a double-digit point lead until four minutes left in the game. It was a pretty bad night on all fronts, aside from the fact that the team still won the game.

“This was the closest 16-point win — let’s not have anyone be fooled by the fact that the final margin was 16,” Paris said. “I hope there’s nobody looking at it and thinking that maybe it was 25 at one point, and then it ended up at 16. This was the closest 16-point game I think I’ve ever been around.”

The Gamecocks also didn’t help themselves with how poorly they shot for most of the night. For a team so reliant on three-point shooting, they missed their first 19 shots from beyond the arc. They finished 3-for-23 (13 percent).

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And it wasn’t one of those games where the other team shot much better to keep it close. The Citadel actually shot worse than South Carolina at 36.8 percent overall and 10.5 percent from three. Yet the Bulldogs were in lockstep with the Gamecocks for pretty much the entire game.

It’s hard for Paris to put his finger on exactly why South Carolina wasn’t ready to play. Whatever the reason, it was something that not even he could defend. He described it as being a “foreign concept” that he couldn’t wrap his head around.

“If I could turn myself into them, we would be ready. That would be the one that I could make sure of,” he said. “If I could be out there playing the game, we would be ready. I would make sure of that. I can’t. It’s hard for me to make sure they’re ready. We had a whole week of practicing.”

From the sound of it, it doesn’t seem to be a preparation issue since Paris noted how they’re doing everything in practice to be ready for games. Even if it sounds like he’s throwing players under the bus, the fact of the matter is that he felt they weren’t ready to play.

“We’re doing all the tricks that we can during the week, and we play a lot at practices. In general, we played even more in these practices,” Paris said. “I just don’t think you can have a whole week and just be doing drill work all day long and then think you’re going to come out on game day. So, we did a lot of simulated games, situated games, and played and mixed the teams up. … Trust me, there’s some things that are not on the guys, but being ready to play, emotionally, mentally is.”

South Carolina is now 7-3 on the year with three games to go before SEC play begins on Jan. 3.

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