South Carolina MBB blown out by No. 23 Tennessee on Senior Night. What we saw

There wasn’t much South Carolina men’s basketball could do at this point to “save” its 2025-26 season.

But a win on Senior Night never hurt anyone.

The Gamecocks welcomed No. 23 Tennessee to Colonial Life Arena on Tuesday night, the same night they would send off seniors and fans from the last home game of a second-straight season where USC threatens to finish last in the SEC.

So while a win would’ve been too little to give USC any SEC Tournament dark horse hype, and far too late to turn the year around before the regular season ends in Oxford on Saturday, it at least would’ve been a bit bright spot for a disappointing 2025-26 season .

Tuesday nights matchup against the Volunteers would provide no such relief, as USC fell to Tennessee 78-59 in what had become typical fashion for this year’s Gamecocks.

“Obviously disappointed in how the game went,” USC coach Lamont Paris said. “But it was a good group of seniors we had this year.”

Meechie Johnson leads seniors

USC (12-18, 3-14 SEC) hosted its annual Senior Night ceremony on Tuesday. Six Gamecock seniors were honored: Meechie Johnson, Mike Sharavjamts, Myles Stute, Kobe Knox, Nordin Kapic and Eli Sparkman.

The most adored of USC’s seniors is Johnson, who flip-flopped between the Gamecocks and Ohio State twice in his six seasons of college basketball. He led USC this season with 17.2 points and 4.3 assists per game.

Johnson, unsurprisingly, led the way for the Gamecocks one last time at Colonial Life Arena. He finished with a team-high 20 points and four assists in the game.

“I’m just thankful for the fans, for always being there for me, the team, coach, through the wins and the losses,” Johnson said. “I wouldn’t rather be no place this year, no matter how things went. ... To leave that court knowing I won’t be playing here again was definitely something that was heartbreaking.”

The most surprising senior night performance came from UC San Diego transfer Nordin Kapic. The Austrian import struggled in his first and only season with the Gamecocks, putting up 2.8 points in 9.1 minutes per game. Against the Volunteers, he had the kind of night USC hoped to get from him all season.

Kapic finished with 13 points on 3 of 5 shooting from the 3-point line. It tied his 13-point performance in the season opener against North Carolina A&T.

“I just try to help the team win in the best way possible,” Kapic said. “Sometimes you perform, sometimes not. But I always try to just to show up and bring the most energy. You can’t be excited about something if you lose in the end.”

Shooting slump remains unsolved

Paris promised way back at the preseason SEC Tipoff in Birmingham that his team would shoot a lot of 3s and “hopefully make them.” His hope never became reality this season, at least not consistently.

The Gamecocks entered Tuesday’s game last in the SEC with a 30.7% shooting percentage despite shooting the sixth-most 3-point attempts per game at 25.5. Paris often said early in the season his team would be fine if it could shoot 33.3% or better at that volume. The Gamecocks surpassed that mark in just nine games during the 2025-26 season.

USC actually reached that benchmark on Tuesday, shooting 36.7% from the floor and 33.3% from beyond the arc, but it wasn’t enough to top the Volunteers. The Gamecocks’ best stretch came when they hit six of their 10 shots in the first half to shrink the deficit to as few as six points, but couldn’t maintain the hot streak and allowed the Volunteers (21-9, 11-6 SEC) to pull away.

“We came out, and we stroked a 3 in the first possession (of the second half),” Paris said. “I don’t know that, in my mind anyway, certainly not in my mind, that the game got away from us quickly. I don’t think so. But in the second half, it did.”

USC never led in the game.

Vols’ paint dominance

Besides lackluster shooting, the biggest limiting factor for USC’s on-court success this season was size. USC’s two 6-foot-10 or taller players — Christ Essandoko and Jordan Butler — don’t shape up to the rest of the conference, where multiple teams possess three to five bigs more and up to five total bigmen. Essandoko and Butler also don’t get as much time on the court as most of their fellow SEC giants, combining for 16.7 minutes per game on average.

The Vols, like so many of USC’s conference opponents this season, sought out those size mismatches to frequent success. Tennessee outrebounded USC 34-23 in the game and outscored the Gamecocks 56-18 in the paint.

“I’ll look at how the total got to that number,” Paris said. “It’s a high number, clearly. ... When we have a legitimate lob threat, we typically want to impact the ball so it doesn’t get downhill. If it gets downhill, it’s hard to do both, stop the ball then still get back to these guys, when the ball gets thrown up three feet above the rim, you’re not going to recover to that.”

This story was originally published March 3, 2026 at 8:02 PM.