Three things to watch for as South Carolina hosts Presbyterian on Wednesday

South Carolina survived a Sunday scare with an overtime win against Southern Miss to remain unbeaten on the year. Now it will have a chance to reset and correct what went wrong last time out.

The Gamecocks (2-0) will face Presbyterian on Wednesday night at Colonial Life Arena. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m. on SEC Network+.

Here are three things to watch for before South Carolin tips off against the Blue House.

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Put the game away when there’s a chance to do so

It’s a two-game sample size, but South Carolina did a nice job of never letting North Carolina A&T back into the game, but then struggled to do that last time out against Southern Miss. The Gamecocks, who made 10 of their first 13 shots, led by as many as 16 points in the first half. Then they ran into a dry spell where they made three of their next 20 shots for the rest of the half.

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Because of that, South Carolina’s lead dwindled all the way down to four going into halftime. Eventually, the missed shots added up to a point where the Golden Eagles took the lead and led by as much as 11 in the final minutes of the second half. All this being said, the Gamecocks had a chance to slam the door on the night and run away with a comfortable win, but couldn’t do so.

Presbyterian is averaging 62 points per game against Division 1 teams this season, so outscoring the Blue Hose shouldn’t be an issue for the Gamecocks. In games like this, it’s more about taking the lead early on and never letting up. They can’t get complacent. Otherwise, you’ll get games like Southern Miss.

Three-pointers are fine. But what’s the plan if they don’t go in?

South Carolina is averaging the third-most three-point shot attempts in college basketball so far this season, with 37.5 shots per game. It averaged 21.2 three-point tries per game last season. It took a school record 43 attempts against Southern Miss and made 16 of them, good for a 37.2 percent make rate.

This is who the Gamecocks are going to be. Head coach Lamont Paris made it clear from the jump that they will shoot a lot of threes, and hopefully, many of them will go in. Through two games, they’re 30-of-75 from deep (40 percent). Nearly every player who steps on the court is an option from the outside.

It’s great when those shots are going in. Nobody bats an eye at it. But here’s the problem. Again, it’s a small sample size, but it’s clear that this team has other issues that it may not be able to combat if those three-pointers aren’t falling. South Carolina started 6-for-8 from deep, then went 10-for-35 the rest of the way. All while the Golden Eagles managed to get themselves back into the game and take the lead.

So the Gamecocks should be able to overcome any shooting struggles against lesser competition, like Presbyterian on Wednesday. But it will be harder to beat better teams if those shots don’t go in. South Carolina needs to find other ways aside from threes to win games if it wants to be competitive.

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Limit getting beaten in transition

One of the problems that South Carolina has is turning the ball over, which it did 15 times against the Golden Eagles and 13 against NC A&T. Some of it has been due to lazy, sloppy passes that those teams have taken advantage of. It’s led to fast break points, which Southern Miss had 16 of on Sunday.

That has created some issues for the defense. But the other part of it is that the defense simply isn’t getting enough stops on its own end. The Gamecocks struggled all night to stop Southern Miss’ Isaac Taveras and Tylik Weeks, who combined for 45 points on 17-for-27 shooting and 14 free throw attempts. They weren’t afraid to get physical and drove inside the paint to the rim a lot in that game.

There were other times when Southern Miss was left open for shot opportunities. South Carolina has to be better defensively. Plain and simple. It looked better when it went to some 1-3-1 zone, but the defense is going to be a big question mark until proven otherwise, and that’s saying something since Paris has always preached playing good, tough defense throughout his tenure.

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