Early adversity wakes South Carolina up heading into regular season

Normally, Lamont Paris lets his players do their thing during halftime. He’s not one to walk in and do all the talking.

But that was a different story on Wednesday. South Carolina went into the half trailing by 17 points against Wofford. Something needed to be said.

“I busted in and said, ‘Now, how could that happen? This is the first time we’re playing in front of other people. How could that happen?'” Paris said. “Then, I let them discuss amongst themselves again and went and just came back in and told them some things we had to do defensively. We just had to get better.”

[Enter to win a framed ‘Forever To Thee’ print from SC artist Beth Clark]

Once the Gamecocks came out of the locker room, the energy shifted. The team started to play better on both ends of the floor and slowly trimmed the deficit.

By the 10-minute mark in the second half, South Carolina had its first lead. It would have to fight hard down the stretch to maintain it, but it did, winning 60-57.

While it was only an exhibition game, Paris said it was important to be able to get a tough game like that in right away.

“The late game situations, it’s impossible to get a real simulation the way that this was,” he said. “I can put 22 seconds up on the clock, and I can put Meechie Johnson up to the free throw line and say, ‘Hey, Meechie, if you miss this free throw, the whole team’s got to run down and backs for 22 seconds.’ And he wants to make that free throw. But if I could check his heart rate and his pulse, I bet it was significantly higher when he had to go in there and make that one-and-one at the end of the game.

“You can try to simulate them, but you can’t the same way. So I think those situations are invaluable. You get it on tape, lot of learning and teaching that will go on based on how this game went and how it played out. Not necessarily just the result but how it played out, even down the stretch…There’s so many good things to take from an exhibition game like this.”

A lot of the first half struggles came from a lack of strong shooting. By halftime, the Gamecocks were 6-for-30 from the floor and just 1-for-12 from three.

Plus, on the defensive end, Wofford was shooting 48 percent from the floor and 46 percent from three to hold a commanding 34-17 lead.

“I’ll say we started off a little slow. Energy wasn’t there,” Zach Davis said. “The first play, it was like we gave up an offensive rebound, two offensive rebounds. So the energy standpoint was really it and then the defense.”

[On3 App: Get South Carolina push notifications from GamecockCentral]

Once the second half began, the shots began to fall and the defense held its own. South Carolina went on a 20-5 run to start and it eventually boiled over into claiming the lead.

There was a day and night difference in the way the team played. The Gamecocks shot 42.9 percent overall and 44.4 percent from three after halftime.

Defensively, South Carolina only gave up 23 points. Wofford went 9-for-27 and only made one three-pointer in the second half.

“We let them throw the first punch really. We didn’t come out aggressive enough, didn’t come out how we talked about coming out throughout the past couple weeks,” Myles Stute said. “In that second half, we came together, said what needed to be said in the locker room and got each other going, got riled up, got our energy going.

“Now we understand, we can’t come out starting games like that. It’s got to be like we did in the second half every time.”

Discuss South Carolina basketball on The Insiders Forum!