How South Carolina could fill out minutes with two starters down

Losing a starter is one thing. But losing two starters in the same week is a much tougher pill to swallow.

After the unfortunate news of Myles Stute being diagnosed with a blood clot, South Carolina will now be without Jamarii Thomas for the foreseeable future. The senior guard is expected to miss 3-4 weeks with a right knee sprain sustained in practice, the team announced on Friday.

So with Stute and Thomas both out for a while, the Gamecocks will have to resort to other options as they’ll try to turn things around in SEC play. But it certainly won’t be easy to replace a combined 56.1 minutes of floor time per game.

As South Carolina faces No. 2 Auburn on Saturday, let’s examine how it could fill out those minutes.

The good news for the Gamecocks is that they already have a solution for one of those starting spots. Zachary Davis, who’s started 21 games in three seasons, moved back into the starting lineup against Alabama when the Stute news came out.

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Davis has been fairly productive throughout his junior year, his best season so far from a statistical standpoint. He’s averaging 9.6 points on 45.5 percent shooting, both career highs, with 3.9 rebounds. He went for 10 points and five rebounds with a block against the Crimson Tide on Wednesday.

However, the other guard spot doesn’t have a straightforward answer as to who will fill that void. It could depend on a few things, like for instance, Auburn’s smallest starter is 6-foot-4. The rest are 6-foot-6 or taller. Could the Gamecocks run a bigger lineup to handle the Tigers’ size on the floor? It’s always a possibility.

But they might be thinking for the long haul and not just one game when it comes to who starts in Thomas’ place. It seems likely that Jacobi Wright will slide over to assume point guard duties. As for the other guard spot, they have a few choices.

If we’re going based off who plays the most minutes, Morris Ugusuk would be the obvious choice. He has never started a game in his career, but he’s been playing more than 20 minutes per game this season. He’s also been the team’s top three-point shooter, currently shooting at a 43.8 percent rate.

Ugusuk feels like the clear cut option as the other starter for the time being. But South Carolina could look towards some of its unproven players to move along their development. Arden Conyers and Cam Scott are the names that come to mind.

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Conyers had only played a combined 16 minutes in five games this season, but then he saw 19 minutes of floor time against the Crimson Tide. The redshirt freshman guard went for two points on 1-of-6 shooting and 0-for-3 from behind the arc.

Lamont Paris, who said Conyers’ uptick in minutes was mainly due to Stute being out, was pleased with how he played, even though he didn’t have a huge performance.

Scott has played more consistently than Conyers has, seeing action in all 15 games as a freshman. Averaging 12.6 minutes per game, his progress hasn’t been as quick as some would like. He’s averaging 3.0 points on 25.9 percent shooting and 15.2 percent from behind the arc.

If anything, these two guards should see a lot more time on the floor. Ultimately, it could end up being a rotation of getting Ugusuk, Conyers and Scott in there.

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