South Carolina hangs on to take down Winthrop

It took until Feb. 17 for South Carolina to get its 10th win of the season last year. In Lamont Paris’ second year, the Gamecocks have reached that plateau, and it’s not even January yet.

South Carolina (10-1) defeated Winthrop 72-62 on Tuesday night. It was another tight-knit contest, but the Gamecocks proved to be the better team in the end to finish the job.

“Winning a basketball game is hard, it’s not easy,” Paris said. “And so this was a perfect example of it. It’s hard to try to stack some together. It’s difficult. And then I’m reminded of it every time I look around the landscape of college basketball. You’ve got teams around the country sweating games like this out and feeling fortunate to come out on the right side of it. And often times not coming out on the side that they planned on.

“So that’s a scrappy bunch. They’re a good team, they’re gonna win a lot of games. They’ll do well in their conference. And they came in ready to compete the entire time…But again, I have a hard time not, at the end of the day, rejoicing in the fact with these guys that they did enough and found a way to come out on top.”

RELATED: South Carolina-Winthrop box score

How it happened

With two teams that take their time on each possession, it was bound to be a low-scoring affair, which it was at the start. South Carolina didn’t cross double-digit points until eight minutes into the game.

But the defense made up for the lack of scoring. Winthrop didn’t score its 10th point until the nine-minute mark in the first half. The Gamecocks held the Eagles to 26 points on 8-of-26 shooting.

South Carolina showed some life at times, taking a double-digit lead more than halfway through the first half. To its credit, it did a better job in the paint, collecting 21 first-half rebounds.

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However, some of the problems that hindered the team’s play recently were still prevalent. The Gamecocks couldn’t generate much more momentum after taking a big lead and let Winthrop hang around.

Shots weren’t falling consistently like they had been used to. They finished the first half shooting 14-for-37 from the field and just 3-for-14 from behind the arc. Thus, the Eagles made it as low as a three-point deficit in the closing minutes.

“I mean, we had open looks. It’s just going to come down to make open shots,” Ta’Lon Cooper said. “The way we got to get buckets is driving to the paint, getting to the free throw line and getting points that way. Other than that, we just got to make open shots.”

With a few seconds to go, Meechie Johnson drove to the rim, only to be greeted by a handful of defenders. His shot was blocked and the ball rolled out to Cooper who sinked a mid-range shot at the buzzer. South Carolina went into the half leading by five points.

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Midway through the second half, South Carolina gained another 10-point lead. But just like earlier, the Gamecocks left the door cracked open for Winthrop to close the gap by going on a three-minute scoring drought.

One of the main reasons why the Eagles kept it close was by driving to the rim. As a result, they kept drawing fouls and made 23-of-29 free throws, 14 of which came in the second half.

“We talked about not filing shooters and trying to have your body in front of guys. They’re very aggressive,” Paris said. “It makes it hard to play them without fouling. I thought the officials did a good job a couple times on holding back on the whistle because it looked real weird. There were bodies flying around, high speed collisions…We just tried to play with our bodies and less with our hands as much as we possibly could.”

Despite that, South Carolina still managed to hang on to its lead. With under five minutes to play, it went on a 6-0 run to gain some momentum. And that came in spite of how dire the shooting was.

After taking a lot of shots outside, the Gamecocks started to utilize BJ Mack inside the paint more. And it worked out. With not a lot of fouls being called, using Mack drew a lot of focus away from the big shooters.

It ended up being a strategy that worked out well. Mack finished with eight points but had six rebounds and three assists.

“We feel like BJ has an advantage,” Jacobi Wright said. “We always look for him down there. And we know he’ll kick it out if they put two on him or somebody’s open. So it definitely opens up the offense for some shooters to knock down shots.”

While Winthrop played well, it wasn’t enough to beat the Gamecocks. South Carolina stepped up when it needed to in the final minutes to pull out the win.

Two observations

Still can’t deliver a knock out punch—Anytime South Carolina gets a big lead, it seems to lose momentum and let things get out of hand. Luckily, this hasn’t been a problem in terms of losing consistently yet. But the Gamecocks have to be better about holding a lead and finishing teams off.

Rebounding needs to be better—It wasn’t all bad, but the Gamecocks should’ve had a few additional rebounds. Instead, they whiffed on a few and gave Winthrop some extra shots. It just felt like the effort wasn’t always there at times.

Key stat

12-for-12—Fouls weren’t always being called in South Carolina’s favor. However, when it went to the line, it knocked down its free throws. The Gamecocks finished 100 percent from the line.

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Turning point

With Mack heavily guarded inside the paint, he kicked out to Ta’Lon Cooper, who hit a three-point shot to put the Gamecocks ahead by nine points with 2:29 to go in the second half.

Up next

South Carolina will have one more game on Friday night before it breaks for Christmas. The Gamecocks will host Elon at 6 p.m. on SEC Network.

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