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Gallery: USC vs. Davidson
Jeff Blake/jblake@thestate.com/
USC's Sam Muldrow shoots in the first half against Davidson.
GoGamecocks.com
Horn to focus players on avoiding late slump
Downey, Archie now must weigh NBA options
Of all the problems men’s basketball coach Darrin Horn could have encountered in his first season at USC, the one that impacted his team the most didn’t turn out to be much of a problem at all.
The Gamecocks, who started the season strong to put themselves in the hunt for an NCAA tournament berth, lost four of their final five games.
That produced a stunned feeling in the locker room Tuesday after a first-round exit from the NIT. The season had looked so promising a few weeks earlier.
But it provided Horn a teaching tool for next season — how to deal with success.
“You can’t do that until you go through it. So I don’t take that as a negative,” Horn said Tuesday after his team’s 70-63 loss to Davidson. “Now we’ve been through that, and hopefully next year we can put ourselves in a similar position and handle it in a better way.”
Horn’s first season resulted in the program’s first winning campaign (21-10) and postseason trip in three years. And with two seniors on the team, there is reasonable hope that next year’s squad will make the program’s first trip to the NCAAs since 2004.
Still, a lot depends on who returns.
Point guard Devan Downey, a two-time first-team All-SEC selection, is a fourth-year junior. So is Dominique Archie, a forward who was an honorable-mention All-SEC pick. They both could test the waters of the NBA draft, though that would not necessitate them giving up their eligibility.
Underclassmen have until April 26 to enter their names, then can withdraw up until 10 days before the June 25 draft and return to school as long as they have not signed with an agent. Notable players who withdrew last year included Clemson’s K.C Rivers, Alabama’s Ronald Steele and North Carolina’s Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green.
Downey declined to talk about his future after Tuesday’s game. Said Archie: “I’m not going to discuss that. But right now I’m not planning on going anywhere.”
The team will lose senior guard Zam Fredrick, its second-leading scorer the past two seasons. Branden Conrad, who proved to be a valuable role player, also has exhausted his eligibility.
The most highly regarded incoming recruit, Lakeem Jackson, is a wing player. He figures to compete with Brandis Raley-Ross, a junior, for Fredrick’s starting spot.
If Downey returns, the Gamecocks figure to be in the hunt for the SEC East championship. They earned a share of the title this season, but the late slide torpedoed their NCAA hopes.
So what went wrong?
“Our shooting percentage went down, our defensive intensity went down. It’s just a slump,” Archie said. “Everyone hits slumps. We’re human.”
Horn felt that after beating Kentucky on Feb. 25 — the last victory before the slide began — the team got away from doing the little things that had put it in good position. Some of his players, all of whom had known only losing seasons at USC, echoed that.
“As a group of guys, this was our first taste of success,” Raley-Ross said. “We know what if feels like to win. We know what it feels like to be talked about, to be on the winning side instead of the losing side. So definitely we’re going to take every game, every situation like it’s not for granted.
“Next year will be different.”
Reach Emerson at (803) 771-8676.
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