The South Carolina Gamecocks dug a first half hole that was too deep for their basketball abilities to prevail against the visiting Georgia Bulldogs. UGa’s Thompkins proved too much, not in his 16 points, but in his block of USC’s Bruce Ellington’s three point try with six seconds to go. The Bulldogs (17-7, 6-4 Southeastern Conference) nearly blew a 23-point lead but held on to defeat the Gamecocks (13-10, 4-6) by the score of 60-56.
Let’s review this game more…
The Gamecocks scored just nine points in the first half, shattering their previous low of 13 for a half in SEC play. To say that was bad basketball is saying nice things about bad basketball. There was no offense strategy and the young Gamecocks were out of sync as a team. Whatever Coach Horn said nearly worked as the Gamecocks mounted a challenge to UGa that almost worked. South Carolina ended the game on a 32-13 run to nearly pull this one out but the hole was too deep.
Bright Spot – Malik Cooke led the Gamecocks scoring with 15 points on 45% shooting in 28 minutes. He also had – 5 Reb, 1 Ast, 2 Stl, 1 Blk.
Congrats – Sam Muldrow picked up the Gamecocks career block record in the UGa game and passed Brandon Wallace’s record of 249 blocks and move into the top 10 in the SEC career list. Muldrow currently has 251 blocks.
Quote that sums it up – Head Coach Darrin Horn….We all just got to witness a terrific college basketball game, I think two teams were really fighting out there. I’m unbelievably proud of our guys, the character and fight that we showed. It is incredibly difficult to do what our young team did today; to have a first half like we did offensively, which was an absolute fluke. I’ve been in this game a long time, and you can be bad offensively, but to have single digits, I’ve never been involved in a game where either team had that happen. Obviously, our confidence was shook with our young group, for us to bounce back and fight the way we did the second half, and make the plays that we did with contributions from so many different guys, is really a step for our team.
Next Game – At Tennessee.
