Five things we learned from South Carolina's loss to Georgia

South Carolina suffered its eighth-straight loss on Tuesday, losing 71-60 to Georgia in Athens. The Gamecocks (10-11, 0-8 SEC) are now 0-8 in SEC play and will go more than a month without a win since the new year began.

Here are five things we learned from watching the way South Carolina performed on Tuesday.

Lamont Paris is getting fed up with the mistakes

Through the rough patches this season, Lamont Paris has remained optimistic and confident his group will be able to turn the corner. It was only a few days ago he said South Carolina’s day was coming. This isn’t to say he’s changed his tune or anything, but you can tell he’s growing tired of seeing these losses come down to self-inflicted mistakes.

Now, he didn’t go into a tirade or anything, but he did let it be known what the issues are and where they seem to stem from. He wasn’t tearing anyone down, more so just knowing players have to be better.

One of his main points was that Ta’Lon Cooper and Meechie Johnson aren’t around anymore to lead the way. South Carolina simply hasn’t gotten that same level of production, specifically from its guards. It’s going to be interesting to see how these next few weeks go as the team reaches the midway point of SEC play.

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Can’t win if you can’t score

For as ugly of a start as the Gamecocks got off to, with six quick turnovers and falling behind by double digits only five minutes into the game, they managed to get back in it. A huge 8-0 run allowed them to cut the lead down to two with 10 minutes to go in the first half.

But for the remainder of the half, the offense couldn’t buy a basket. After Zachary Davis’ three-pointer with 10:12 to go, South Carolina didn’t make another field goal until the 2:25 mark. It went into the break making only one of its last 11 shots. Meanwhile, Georgia went on a pair of scoring runs to go up by 14 at halftime.

For the rest of the game, the Gamecocks struggled to make it close again. They got back within single digits with a little over a minute to go in the second half. By that point, though, they were still out of reach to do anything more. This one scoring drought from the first half basically ended any chance of winning this game.

Turnovers are a part of the team’s identity

It’s not much of a secret at this point. South Carolina turns the ball over quite a lot and Tuesday was no different. It finished with 17 turnovers, bringing their season total up to 276. The team has committed at least 16 turnovers in each of their last five games.

It’s one thing to have a bad shooting night, which it wasn’t all that bad from the second half on. But since it’s not just one thing alone that this team struggles with, the turnovers were another reason for the loss.

The passing was really sloppy for most part, with the first possession of the game going as follows: Morris Ugusuk dribbled and threw a bullet pass to Jacobi Wright waiting along the perimeter. The pass was there, except it went off Wright’s hands and ended up a few rows into the seats. Later in the period, Collin Murray-Boyles made a similar pass that went into the crowd.

In SEC play, they’re averaging 16.3 turnovers per game. In some cases, teams can overcome being prone to turning the ball over. Take Georgia for instance, who turns it over nearly 20 percent of the time, which ranks 315th in college basketball this year. But the Dawgs make up for it by doing some of the other things right to win any given night.

It would be easy to say South Carolina can live with the turnovers as they come, too. The only problem is that it’s one of multiple issues, like scoring consistently, that make it harder to win.

How concerning is the guard play?

Between South Carolina’s three starting guards, they combined for eight points on 3-of-15 shooting. Wright didn’t score in 27 minutes, Davis had more turnovers than made shots, and Ugusuk had two points.

Jamarii Thomas was probably the lone bright spot amongst the guards, finishing with 19 points and two steals, but he also committed five turnovers. Arden Conyers did fine in his 18 minutes, going for nine points on 3-of-6 shooting with no turnovers.

From watching this group play for 21 games this season, it seems the real problem is they don’t have that go-to guard like they did last year with Cooper and Johnson. There were multiple possessions where they’d try to get a play set up, perhaps for a guard to take a shot. Instead, the guards struggled to generate much offense and kicked it out to one of the big men in the paint. This resulted in Georgia racking up six blocked shots.

There just doesn’t seem to be a real flow on offense. Collin Murray-Boyles is the focal point of the offense, but it even looked like a struggle to get him consistent touches. At some point, it would be good to see what other guards who don’t play as much get some more run. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to at least see if something is there.

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Where will the wins, if any, come the rest of the way?

This felt like one of those games where South Carolina should’ve performed better and maybe even come away with a victory. Georgia deserves some credit for playing well but it wasn’t exactly like the Dawgs were setting the world on fire before Tuesday.

They came into this game on a four-game losing streak and had just lost by 30 points to Florida. But once the Gamecocks dug themselves into that early hole, it was hard for them to try and climb out of it.

Which leads into what’s next. South Carolina will now play four straight top 25 teams before facing its next unranked opponent in LSU on Feb. 18. It all starts on Saturday with No. 13 Texas A&M coming into town. Then it will have a week off before heading to Lexington to play No. 12 Kentucky.

It could be a very rough stretch for the Gamecocks. That’s why a win over Georgia would’ve been huge for moral sake. But maybe the day Paris had been talking about is around the corner.

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