'Fight fire with fire': How South Carolina plans to stop Oregon center N'Faly Dante

There might not be many college basketball players playing better right now than Oregon center N’Faly Dante.

With the Ducks all but certain to miss the NCAA Tournament a week ago, Dante led a miracle run to help them win the Pac-12 Tournament. In the championship game, he scored 25 points on 12-of-12 shooting to secure the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player Award.

As fate would have it, South Carolina will get to go up against Dante in the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament on Thursday (4 p.m., TNT). While the players know it’s going to be a challenge, it’s nothing that they’re going to shy away from.

“You never really get to go up against teams like this in the first round,” Collin Murray-Boyles said. “Just being able to do that, being able to show what we can do as a team against a team like this, it’s going to be real good.”

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Murray-Boyles, who has had to face his share of big men in the SEC this year, will be handling duties of guarding him from the opening tip. Dante eats up in the paint and had a lot of success with this in the conference tournament. But the freshman forward said there are things he and his teammates will have to do to make him play out of his comfort zone.

“He’s a really good finisher. But we have to make him extend his catches out a little bit and make him work to get down there and hopefully make him shoot over us. That’s one main thing we should focus on,” Murray-Boyles said.

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The good news for South Carolina is Murray-Boyles won’t have to play every single minute against Dante on Thursday. The Gamecocks have other players that can match up with his 6-foot-11 presence, specifically Josh Gray.

“I think I size up pretty well. He’s a strong, physical big, but I’m also a strong, physical big,” said Gray, who stands at 7-feet tall. “So I think it’ll be fun to be on the big stage, banging back and forth for 40 minutes straight.”

Gray has proven to be a valuable asset off the bench, especially in these specific situations. For instance, he was able to handle playing against three seven-footers on Kentucky back on Jan. 23 in an upset win. He finished with nine points and six rebounds, playing a big role in making the Wildcats ineffective.

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One strategy Gray and the team have discussed is double-teaming Dante, which others have done when playing against him. It’s something they’ve considered doing. But Gray shared other ways of handling someone with that presence on the floor.

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve seen him pass out the post. He’s pretty decent passing out the post. And then you’ve just got to worry about rotations afterwards,” Gray said. “As far as weakness, I think just match physicality with physicality, fight fire with fire. If you relent, then I feel like he wins. One of the slogans from my old school that I carry to this day is, ‘Chance favors the aggressor.’ So if you’re the aggressive one first, the odds will be better in your favor.”

Gray said one of the keys will be to continue throwing bodies at Dante to give him as many looks as possible. And if done properly, he expects to see the odds fall in their favor.

“I don’t think Oregon can mess with us,” Gray said. “I feel like our brand of basketball, if it’s executed the way that we play, I feel like we should be fine.”

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