South Carolina Basketball: Ranking the top-12 point guards in Gamecock history
By Kevin Miller
South Carolina Basketball’s No. 2 Greatest Point Guard of All-Time:
Kevin Joyce
Part of the New York point guard stretch of Gamecock basketball, Kevin Joyce (1970-1973) was the most well-rounded point guard of the Frank McGuire era. Joyce was an exceptional athlete who shared point guard duties with John Roche for a season and Mike Dunleavy for a year but still is one of the best players in team history.
As a first-year player in the 1970-1971 season, Joyce scored almost 13 points per game despite three first-team All-ACC players being in the starting lineup alongside him in John Roche, Tom Owens, and Tom Riker. That year, the Gamecocks won their only ACC title and left the league after the championship.
In the ACC title game that season, the 6’3″ Joyce was involved in a jump ball with North Carolina’s 6’10” center Lee Dedmon with just a few seconds to go with the Gamecocks down by 1. Joyce outleaped the bigger Tar Heel and tipped the ball to Tom Owens for the game-winning layup as the clock expired.
Joyce was part of the 1972 Olympic team that famously was cheated out of a gold medal against the Soviet Union. After graduating following an All-American 1972-1973 season (20.4 points per game, 5.2 assists per game), Joyce was taken in the first round of the NBA Draft by the Indiana Pacers.