South Carolina Basketball: 3 thumbs up, 3 thumbs down from blowout of Florida A&M
By Kevin Miller
South Carolina basketball coach Lamont Paris and his team officially have surpassed last season's win total. The disastrous 11-21 record from the 2022-2023 season seems like a distant memory now that the Gamecocks are 12-1 heading into SEC play.
In a game that was full of runs, the Gamecocks had more runs and the biggest one (a whopping 20-0 stretch in the 1st half), and South Carolina basketball cruised to a 32-point home victory.
For the first time in his career (and likely not the last), true freshman Collin Murray-Boyles led the Gamecocks in scoring. Off the bench, CMB dropped 17 points, including 9 in a row at one point, despite playing just 14 minutes.
Myles Stute and Morris Ugusuk chipped in with 16 and 11, respectively, on a combined 7-14 3-point shooting effort. Meechie Johnson (11) and Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk (10) also scored in double-figures.
As a team, Carolina assisted on 21 of their 30 makes (Johnson, Ta'Lon Cooper, and Stephen Clark combined for 14 of those), and they won the rebounding battle by 14 boards.
Even the long-standing inconsistencies at the free throw line (something that goes back for years in Columbia) was a strength against the Rattlers. South Carolina shot 24-28 from the charity stripe while only committing 9 fouls against FAMU.