South Carolina comes to life in second half to take down Radford

It could’ve been a real Nightmare Before Christmas for South Carolina. But like most Christmas classics, there’s always a happy ending. In this case, it turned out to be a very happy ending.

With an eight-day break and Christmas around the corner, the Gamecocks trailed for most of the first half against Radford on Sunday. But with a much better showing after halftime, they were able to overcome the small deficit and win 74-48.

South Carolina has now won six games in a row and moves to 9-3 on the season.

“Good effort by the guys in the second half. The games are hard,” head coach Lamont Paris said. “And when I say these games, I’m just talking about the proximity to a holiday or a break that these guys have anticipated. … When it was all said and done, I wanted to come out with a one-point smashing victory and that would’ve gotten it done for us. So we did better than that and we’ll feel better about that as we travel.”

How it happened

South Carolina opened the game with a Collin Murray-Boyles on a fadeaway jumper to take a 2-0 lead. After holding on to that lead for a little less than two minutes, Radford controlled the rest of the first half and never trailed again going into the break.

The Gamecocks, only a few days removed from a huge overtime win over Clemson, couldn’t have looked any more uninspired on Sunday. They came out of the gates slow and didn’t play well while the Highlanders looked ready to go even after playing on Friday afternoon.

Radford shot 45.2 percent from the floor in the first half with TJ NeSmith racking up 12 points on 5-for-5 shooting. Jarvis Moss, the team’s leading scorer this year, had 10 points with a pair of three-pointers.

“I just thought we were a little disjointed in our focus,” Paris said. “We were not in full clear focus in the first half. And then in the second half, we got it back together, particularly on the defensive end.”

Meanwhile, South Carolina never got it going and went 8-for-22 (36.4 percent) from the field. There were brief flashes, like when Cam Scott hit a pair of shots near the midway point. The freshman guard played 13 minutes and scored nine points on 3-of-7 shooting on Sunday, two of those made baskets coming from three-point range.

But other than that, it was a struggle for the entire team. The Gamecocks played sloppy and turned the ball over nine times. As a result, they went into the half down 36-30.

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With the way the first half went, South Carolina was now in a spot where it had to come from behind to try and win this game. Jamarii Thomas got things going early into the second half with two straight threes and a contested shot inside the paint to get the crowd into it. The Gamecocks would eventually recapture the lead on a layup by Murray-Boyles at the 13-minute mark.

“We were just changing the intensity,” Thomas said. “The halftime speech was just that we came out sloppy and looked like we were ready to go home. But we were just changing the defensive intensity and pressuring the ball more.”

Once that happened, South Carolina never relinquished the lead again. The lead only grew as the team went on a 15-2 run right after jumping back in front. They outscored Radford 44-12 in the second half. They closed out the game on a 23-2 run over the final 10 minutes.

Nick Pringle has continued to look more comfortable in South Carolina’s system, as he finished with 12 points and eight rebounds. He didn’t do a ton of work in the paint from a shooting standpoint. But he got to the free throw line quite a bit and went a perfect 10-for-10 on his shots.

“I knew I hadn’t missed yet,” Pringle on if he knew how well he was shooting on his free throws during the game. “I was telling myself before the game that I missed my first couple last game for a good minute. So I wanted to try to get that streak back going and build my confidence with that.”

Murray-Boyles and Thomas also had double-digit point outings with 15 and 18 points, respectively. Thomas was a nice spark plug coming out of halftime, as he went a perfect 3-for-3 from behind the arc.

Two observations

These slow starts are adding up—This isn’t the first time the Gamecocks have had a sluggish outing. They’ve done this a few times this season where they’d trail at halftime and then make a comeback in the second half to win. That’s all good and fine. It didn’t matter on Sunday. But that’s going to be a big issue if this continuously happens in SEC play.

Defense turned it up in the second half—After giving up a handful of shots to Radford in the first half, the Gamecocks locked in and held the Highlanders to 12 points on 20.8 percent shooting coming out of the break.

Key stat

25-for-27—What a phenomenal performance at the free throw line by South Carolina. This was about as good as it has been all season long. In some ways, you could say it ended up being a key difference in the game. The Gamecocks took complete advantage of their given opportunities and hit on 92.6 percent of their free throws.

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Turning point

Seven minutes into the second half, the Gamecocks were able to regain the lead and never trailed to Radford for the rest of the game. They went on a long 15-2 run to take a double-digit point advantage and were comfortably in front from that point on.

Up next

South Carolina will head into a long layoff before its next game due to Christmas break. The Gamecocks won’t return to action until Monday, Dec. 30 when they host Presbyterian in their final non-conference game before SEC play. Tip-off is at 7 p.m. on SEC Network.

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