South Carolina looking for resilience to carry it through SEC Tournament

As South Carolina winds down its 2024-25 regular season, gaining momentum at every chance while heading into what will be a win-or-go-home SEC Tournament is key.

A 19-point win over Arkansas on Saturday afternoon isn’t a bad place to start to find it.

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Head coach Lamont Paris said wins like Saturday’s show how resilient his team is.

“You wanna see some real resilience,” Paris said. “These guys have come out with tremendous energy. You don’t accidentally, defensively have a performance like that. It takes energy, it takes commitment, it takes tremendous effort so that’s what these guys are doing right now on March 1.”

Resilience is a word that can describe almost every aspect of South Carolina’s last 16 games. However, more often than not, it’s not for a good reason. Six of the Gamecocks’ 14 losses in conference play have come by two scores or less.

“To do that, where they’ve lost some games and keep their team going, it’s a heck of a statement to their staff and the team,” Arkansas head coach John Calipari said.

South Carolina’s resilience isn’t something that has recently popped up in these two home wins either. After the Gamecocks’ one-point loss to Florida at home, Collin Murray-Boyles reiterated with his teammates that they’re not losers.

“I mean the record might reflect something different, but in our hearts, I know we’re not losers,” Murray-Boyles said at the time. “… That’s just my mentality. … I still wanna win, we (are) still gonna try to win every game.”

South Carolina allowed only 53 points against the Razorbacks, marking the first time the Gamecocks held an opponent under 60 points since the end of non-conference play. It’s just the second time they’ve done this against a power conference opponent this season.

“I’m just really happy for the guys to play well,” Paris said. “And really to have two consecutive games in this building that we’ve played really well in a way that we were able to reap the rewards of it.”

A win like Saturday’s is proof of concept that the Gamecocks can hold teams to bad shooting nights.

“And sometimes you kind of do need proof of concept with these guys,” Paris said. “Now, I have proof of concept having done this for however many years, right? But these guys, it’s what happened yesterday or in the last game.”

Calipari said he told Paris that if South Carolina had played all home games, they’d be top 10. The Gamecocks’ five home conference losses have come by an average of six points. If you exclude South Carolina’s outlier 20-point home loss to Alabama, the number drops to just over three.

However, when you change the data to the Gamecocks’ road losses in SEC play, that average jumps to almost 20.

“Folks, we’ve been through a gauntlet just like South Carolina,” Calipari said. “… They beat Texas the same way they beat us.”

The fans are a key part in that home momentum, but the moments of success need to continue outside of Colonial Life Arena. The Gamecocks need their defense to travel with them to Nashville in two weeks, Nick Pringle said.

“That’s one thing about this team I feel like we can improve more on,” Pringle said. “… I feel like our defense can set the tone for a lot of games, and if we can get that to travel in the SEC Tournament, it can be scary for a lot of teams. I don’t think any team is sleeping on us necessarily, but we got to make sure we bring our defense when we go there.”

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