Why South Carolina couldn't match up with Auburn in blowout loss
South Carolina men’s basketball suffered one of its worst losses of the season Friday. The Gamecocks lost to Auburn, 86-55, in the Quarterfinals round of the SEC Tournament.
The Tigers seemed to have the Gamecocks’ number this season, as the matchup proved to be in their favor again. They have now beaten South Carolina by a combined 71 points in two games.
South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris agreed that the Tigers were a bad matchup for his team.
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“I think that’s a fair assessment, I would have to say, just based on our personnel,” Paris said. “They’re suited to take away some of the things, and there aren’t many teams that have been able to do that, but they’re suited to take away some of the things we like, that make us comfortable.
Auburn possesses a lot of size and used it to its advantage against South Carolina early and often. The Tigers scored 42 of its 86 points in the paint.
“I think it’s a combination of they’re very aggressive defensively, then they’re athletic and long, and they’re not afraid to be physical and bump,” Paris said.
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“Most of the things that you do to alleviate that pressure are made more difficult because it’s hard to rip drive them. You rip drive them, they’re not afraid to body bump you. Sometimes games are called in a way where those are fouls. We played in a game where there were 64 free throws shot in one game. Other games they’re not called.”
The matchup was one thing, but South Carolina had a hard time getting stops on the defensive end.
“Part of it in this game was we had a hard time manufacturing stops. That’s become a good thing for us,” Paris said. “If you look at pace, it’s a little bit of a misnomer if you don’t know exactly all the components that go into pace, i.e., if you get an offensive rebound, that counts as a same possession. We’re a pretty decent offensive-rebounding team.”
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The Gamecocks like to run in transition a lot. On Friday, the fast break points were not there due to Auburn’s strong shooting. The Tigers didn’t shoot 61 percent like last time but rather at a 49.3 percent clip in this game.
“I think our offense has generally started better on a miss, right? If we get a defensive stop, it allows us to make our first action happen with less resistance typically because some teams specifically, a lot of teams, try to make our first action difficult for us,” Paris said. “Sometimes that’s counterproductive because it makes us run even more offense on the possession.”
For a team so defensive-focused, a hot opponent and poor shooting will sink your momentum quickly. To Paris, running in transition is one of their keys.
“We like to get stops for a lot of reasons, one of which is it does trigger us into our initial action, happens a little bit quicker and we can get into some of the things we like better on the offense end,” Paris said. “Because they were scoring so many baskets, we weren’t getting stops, then they were pressing some on the end of that, it got bogged down a little bit for us on the offensive end.”
