South Carolina MBB overmatched vs. No. 3 Florida on the road. 3 observations
The first time these teams clashed back in January, the Gators barely dodged an upset at Colonial Life Arena, needing a last-second shot to escape with a win.
USC head coach Lamont Paris rewatched that game ahead of Saturday’s rematch, still seething at the sentiment that the Gamecocks could’ve won. He said he hates the thought: Ahh, we were close.
“We should have beat Florida the first time we played them,” he said in a radio interview with 107.5 after Saturday’s game. “From a basketball standpoint, I would probably use the word miraculous, that all the things happened and the game ended up a loss.”
This time, there were no miracles and no real drama.
The South Carolina men’s basketball team hung around in the first half, but No. 3 Florida slammed the door shut in the second, cruising to an 88-67 rout Saturday at the O’Connell Center. The Gamecocks have now set a program record with 12 straight SEC losses.
USC shot an impressive 55% in the first half — only for Florida (22-3, 9-3) to match them nearly shot-for-shot at 52%.
It was all Gators in the second half: all gas, no brakes. It’s their fourth-straight game with 10 or more 3-pointers (14), all wins. They finished shooting 60%.
Jacobi Wright led USC (10-15, 0-12 SEC) with 13 points and four rebounds, while Collin Murray-Boyles and Nick Pringle each chipped in 12.
South Carolina will get some reprieve down the stretch of the season. All of the Gamecocks’ SEC games have either been against a ranked team or on the road.
Only two of the final six games are ranked (at No. 21 Missouri, at No. 5 Tennessee), and only one other is on the road (at LSU on Tuesday.)
“It’s been unbelievable. I’ve been doing this since 1996-97, and I haven’t seen anything like this in any league that I’ve ever been in,” Paris said in the radio interview of this tough stretch of games. “It’s the extreme depth of extreme quality. This is extreme. We should all be witness to this, what is happening right now.”
Here are three observations from South Carolina’s record-setting loss at Florida:
Gators start quick, Gamecocks respond
Florida came out firing, draining its first six shots to race out to a 15-6 lead.
South Carolina, which has been getting off to better starts lately, flipped the script and hit back with a 17-3 run to grab a five-point lead, its biggest of the night. For a moment, it looked like the Gamecocks were ready to make it a fight.
“I keep saying that there’s a component of performance in this game, and we did some good things in the first half,” Paris told 107.5 FM. “And then when you’re scoring the way that we were, I think we were still over one point per possession, which is kind of the Mason Dixon Line as to who’s going to win or not.”
Then the buckets stopped falling.
A Wright 3-pointer with 8:04 left in the first half was USC’s last field goal for over 14 minutes of game time.
Florida wasn’t exactly torching the nets either — missing eight of its next nine — but the Gators found their rhythm again late in the half, closing on an 11-4 spurt to take a 37-33 lead into the break.
Completely different second half
The Gators came out of halftime on a mission, opening with a 12-1 run and stretching their lead to 15 in a blink.
South Carolina finally broke its field goal drought when Morris Ugusuk splashed a 3-pointer — its first made shot in over 14 minutes — but Florida responded by stepping on the gas again.
“We were out of rhythm. We had some critical ones where we were at the basket and weren’t able to finish or make a play,” Paris said in the radio interview. “And then they were also scoring. We were taking the ball out of the net every single time. It just was hard to get anything going that way.”
Florida’s Denzel Aberdeen caught fire from deep, burying three of his five 3-pointers as part of a 12-0 Gators surge that put the game out of reach. He finished with a career-high 22 points.
Bright spots dim in second half
South Carolina’s bench, which has been quiet in recent games, made some noise early Saturday. Ugusuk and redshirt freshman Arden Conyers knocked down 3-pointers during the Gamecocks’ first-half push.
Wright, meanwhile, continued to shake off his early SEC slump. After starting conference play shooting just 31% (18 for 58), he’s turned things around, going 13 of 21 (61.9%) over the past three games, including 6 of 9 on Saturday. He had eight points at halftime.
But when the second half rolled around, the well ran dry. The bench and Wright combined for just eight points before garbage time. USC finished with 16 points from the reserves overall.
Without secondary scoring, USC couldn’t keep up with Florida’s firepower.
Next four games
- Tuesday: at LSU, 9 p.m. (SEC Network)
- Feb. 22: vs Texas, 8:30 p.m. (SEC Network)
- Feb. 25: at Missouri, 9 p.m. (ESPN2 or ESPNU)
- March 1: vs Arkansas, 1 p.m. (SEC Network)
This story was originally published February 15, 2025 at 10:24 PM.
