How South Carolina met finesse with a brick wall for upset win over Kentucky
A burly, bearded USC police officer burst out of the traffic inside the arena tunnel.
“We’re gonna have to get through here to protect the team!” he hollered.
There was still chattering. A South Carolina staffer huddled around the security personnel, passing down a message that South Carolina’s school president wanted to ensure the road team was safe. Wait, someone asked — what team? The visiting team, he was told.
The burly USC police officer turned his head. “Protect the visiting team!” he said sternly.
The security detail did its job. Also making it easier: They started working before the buzzer even sounded on South Carolina’s 79-62 victory over No. 6 Kentucky. The police officers and security workers were already shooing the Wildcats off the court and toward the locker room as USC’s Meechie Johnson dribbled out the clock.
Even UK coach John Calipari, who is no stranger to a court-storming when his squad loses on the road, was waving his hands and telling his squad to vacate the court.
The champions of safety across America will applaud him. And his team should thank him. After getting bullied by the South Carolina basketball team for 40 minutes, there was no need for USC’s students to pile on.
Kentucky, stacked with a trio of five-star freshmen and one who’s already drawing Victor Wembanyama comparisons, arrived at Colonial Life Arena like a pickup squad that called each other “Man” because they didn’t know anyone’s name.
They were disoriented. Disjointed. Disrupted by a South Carolina defense that met finesse with a brick wall.
“If we get bumped and we shoot the ball like that,” Calipari said, extending his arm sideways and flicking his wrist up, “you’re not making layups … versus, ‘I’m going through this contact and I’m either getting fouled or making it.”
The Gamecocks limited the nation’s top scoring offense (91.6 ppg) to a season-low output. They out-rebounded the Wildcats, limited their possessions and forced them into contested shots.
South Carolina had a plan: Match five-stars with size. Match shift guards with size. Match big men with size. Match Wembanyama look-alikes (with size, mass, girth and whatever else hurts to run into).
An insight into that South Carolina plan on Tuesday night: When the 7-foot-2 Zvonimir Ivisic — who had played just one college gam because of NCAA eligibility issues — first checked in for Kentucky, South Carolina coach Lamont Paris looked down his bench and told Josh Gray to lace up.
Gray, a 7-foot, 265-pound senior from Brooklyn, had not played double-digit minutes in two months. But he is a man. A monster of a man. Sure, perhaps he posed for postgame pictures while wearing a rubber horse head, but during the game he was a bully sent out to torture UK’s teenagers.
Paris wanted Gray to “lay his mass against (Ivisic’s) body and see how that turned out,” he admitted.
“They have three 7-footers who are all freshmen,” Gray said of Kentucky. “I’ve got the experience factor. So in situations where the ball was thrown to my side, I just ducked them in with little to no resistance.”
This was a clinic from a South Carolina team (16-3, 4-2 SEC) that came into Tuesday without a signature victory. But this team is dangerous when counted out.
Asked postgame what he would have said if someone told him last year — as South Carolina sputtered in his first season as coach — the Gamecocks this year would be coming off an upset of Kentucky with a 16-3 record, Paris smirked.
“I would have probably said, ‘Where are we ranked?’ ” Paris said.
The ranking will come. And, if it doesn’t? Great. That’ll mean more teams like Kentucky will stroll into Colonial Life Arena with little worry and little anticipation for the brick wall waiting on the other side.
And Paris got something better than a ranking on Tuesday. He got a vote of confidence from Calipari, who claimed South Carolina is the best defensive team in the SEC. Paris is all about defense. To him, that must be what it feels like to hear your son saved kids from a burning building.
“It feels good,” Paris said.
It had to feel especially good considering he said this earlier in his press conference: “I want to talk with no level of arrogance at all, but our guys believe whoever we play, that that game will be the best defense they’ve gone against. … They have accepted that challenge and they want to prove that.”
South Carolina is proving it every night, which makes this team so fun to watch.
Watch the defense. Watch the switches. Watch the box-outs. Watch the tenacity. Watch the recovery. That stuff never fades.
Then hope the offense comes together. Hope Ta’Lon Cooper (20 points) is hot. Hope Jacobi Wright (14) is nailing his triples. Hope Johnson (14) and B.J. Mack (8) are finishing at the rim.
Hope for a night like Tuesday.
This story was originally published January 24, 2024 at 8:55 AM.
