Turnovers reach new high in South Carolina's latest loss: 'That's unacceptable'

Even during the tough times, Lamont Paris still remains optimistic. Amid a four-game losing streak, his expectation is for South Carolina to play well enough to win the games it has been losing.

As optimistic as Paris is, he knows as well as anyone that the way the Gamecocks performed on Wednesday won’t cut it. In a 63-63 loss to Vanderbilt, they racked up 25 turnovers, the most in a single game so far this season.

In South Carolina’s 68 total possessions, the team turned the ball over 36.7 percent of the time. It was a number that was far too high in Paris’ mind.

“That’s unacceptable. That’s just going to be hard to win a game if you do that,” the third-year head coach said. “Then you do that in conjunction with 11 second-chance points. You need all those things to happen if you’re going to turn the ball over a lot.”

WIN TICKETS: The No. 5 Florida Gators are coming to Columbia on Wednesday, Jan. 22

After only committing nine turnovers against Auburn last Saturday, the Gamecocks returned to their old habits and were up to 16 by halftime. In a matter of 20 minutes, they had already surpassed their previous record for most turnovers in a game (15) this season.

While South Carolina was better in limiting those mistakes after halftime, the final tally proved to be too much. The entire starting lineup had three or more turnovers apiece, with Zachary Davis and Collin Murray-Boyles finishing with five each.

Vanderbilt went for 22 points off those turnovers, 14 of which came in the first half.

And in a game that came down to a last-second put back shot with 0.6 seconds remaining, it could’ve easily gone in the Gamecocks’ favor. Outside of the turnovers, they were playing well in other facets.

They shot 42.2 percent from the field, slightly better than the Commodores. They won the rebound battle convincingly at 37-25. Even at the free throw line, an area that has haunted them at times, they went 18-for-23.

But when it came down to it, the turnovers were too much to overcome. If they had cut those numbers down, even by just a sliver, it could have been different game. One that didn’t need to go down to the wire with a comeback effort included.

For as many miscues as South Carolina had, Vanderbilt’s defense did a great job of forcing those empty possessions. The Commodores, who came into the game top 10 in steals, finished with 15 steals against the Gamecocks.

“I will say, I haven’t seen that many clean strips. They could all be clean. And it’s not even that it was all clean strips, it’s relative to where the guy who strips it is,” Paris said. “There’s plenty of positions of where you could do that from. The ones from behind are very difficult to do that. They’re very difficult.

“But good on them. They did a really good job of, once we beat them by way of driving, by way of a cut, by way of an offensive rebound, once we beat them of reaching in and taking the ball from us. They do a really good job of that.”

WIN TICKETS: The No. 5 Florida Gators are coming to Columbia on Wednesday, Jan. 22

Now, through 17 games, South Carolina has compiled 208 turnovers, which is about 12 per game. With 14 games to go in the regular season, there’s a chance the team could beat last season’s total of 344. Even then, the Gamecocks were only averaging 10.1 turnovers per game, but nothing on this scale in one game.

As they get set to head to Oklahoma on Saturday, solving the issue behind these turnovers is quickly becoming a top priority for Paris.

“You can’t turn the ball over like that,” Paris said. “… I think we have to go back to the drawing board on, once you beat your man, practicing someone from behind smacking down at the ball really hard and then still keeping the ball to go up to the rim. I’d say the vast majority of them ended up that way. That’ll be on us as coaches to go back and practice being really strong with the ball.”

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