South Carolina Basketball: Gamecocks Fall at Home to Vanderbilt

They say winning two games starts a winning streak. Well, the South Carolina basketball team returned home on Tuesday night to take on the Vanderbilt Commodores looking to start their first winning streak in quite a while. Prior to their road victory at Ole Miss over the weekend, the Gamecocks had not won two in a row since beating Western Kentucky and Eastern Michigan in back-to-back home games in December. Vanderbilt entered the contest having a modest three-game winning streak of their own, including an upset of top-10 Tennessee.

Lamont Paris continued his recent trend of keeping star freshman GG Jackson on the bench at tip-off, a decision that seems to be somewhat disciplinary in nature. Jackson was one of two subs brought in just before the under-16:00 media timeout.

The matchup started with a livelier-than-expected crowd being deflated early due to poor offensive play from both squads (1-11 combined from the field) that was followed by two quick threes from the Commodores. From there, the bad start got worse as the road team jumped out to a 15-2 lead that saw Lamont Paris elect not to use a timeout.

The margin between the Gamecocks and Commodores grew slowly for the rest of the half, but the Gamecocks had plenty of opportunities to cut into the lead. Vandy missed a lot of shots in the first twenty minutes but managed to pull down 12 offensive rebounds, just three less than Carolina’s total number of rebounds. The second-chance opportunities allowed Jerry Stackhouse’s group to fire up 40 shots in the first half, including 28 from three. The Gamecocks shot just 28.6% from the field and 14.3% from the perimeter for the half, keeping their deficit large as the score stood 38-18 at the intermission.

The second half wasn’t much better for the home team. South Carolina continued to get virtually nothing on the glass from anyone not named Josh Gray, and shots were not falling. Amazingly, Vanderbilt’s first shooting foul was not called until three minutes into the second half, and after their second two-shot foul, Meechie Johnson canned both freebies to cap an 8-0 Gamecock run early in the period. The run put the crowd back into the game, but they were silenced when Myles Stute hit a three to start an 8-0 run for Vanderbilt.

Reigning SEC Player of the Week Liam Robbins was excellent all night. The Vandy forward partnered with fellow forward Myles Stute and their point guard Ezra Manjon to score 49 points and grab 17 rebounds while only turning the ball over three times. Despite Jerry Stackhouse taking his foot off the gas, his Commodores coasted to an easy victory on the road that was not nearly as close as the final score indicated. No Gamecocks performed particularly well overall, but Josh Gray washed the window well yet again (12 rebounds), and Chico Carter shot the ball well from deep (3-5). The biggest cheer of the second half came when Vanderbilt missed two free throws, granting every Gamecock fan in attendance a free Chick-Fil-A sandwich tomorrow.

The game was never really close until a big Carolina run in garbage time, and when one checks the box score, the stats paint a clear picture: the South Carolina basketball team was outplayed in every facet of the game on Tuesday night. Vanderbilt dominated the rebounding battle (48-34), committed fewer turnovers (9-10), and shot better from the field (38.5%-36.2%) and the three-point line (27%-25.9%). They also shot more efficiently from the charity stripe (83.3%-65.2%) and fouled less than the Gamecocks (13-18).

An ugly game from start to finish, Lamont Paris and the Gamecocks will need to put this one behind them if they want to bounce back their next time out.

For those following the GG Jackson-Lamont Paris saga, Jackson played sparingly again, and the body language between coach and player was not encouraging.

The Gamecocks will travel to LSU to take on the last-place Tigers on Saturday at 1:00 EST on the SECNetwork.