Vols just too much for USC in romp

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — “We just got outplayed.” 

In those four words, Devan Downey summed up one rough night on Rocky Top for the South Carolina basketball team, as No. 14 Tennessee thrashed the Gamecocks 79-53 in a game that wasn’t even that close. 

After Lakeem Jackson’s layup in the first 11 seconds of the game gave USC the early 2-0 advantage, everything that could go wrong did, as a poor first-half offensive performance preceded a nightmarish second-half defense. 

“The key tonight was that we were not good offensively in the first half. We were really stagnant in terms of our movement,” USC coach Darrin Horn said. “To start the second half, we didn’t play any defense at all.”

Trailing only 30-16 at halftime, USC had struggled offensively in the first 20 minutes, but was nowhere near panic mode; its reputation as a second-half team coupled with confidence that missed offensive opportunities would swing back down the stretch.
“I wasn’t too worked up at halftime,” Horn said. 

Then the bottom fell out. UT opened the second half on a 12-4 run, the exclamation point being Scotty Hopson’s three-pointer with 16:04 left in the game, giving Tennessee a 22-point lead:  42-20. 

“When that lead goes from 14 to 20, as we’ve talked about all year,” Horn said,  “we’re not really in a situation where it’s easy for us to overcome that, because we’re not deep and explosive offensively.”

South Carolina wouldn’t get closer than 18 points for the rest of the night, as UT, leading by as much as 27 at one point, kept on making easy basket after easy basket. 
“In the second half to give them that many easy baskets, was just inexcusable,” Horn said. 
The first ten minutes of the game looked like something out of the gymnasium at the Springfield, Mass., YMCA, where the first game of basketball was played in the 1890s, as both teams combined for 22 missed shots, four turnovers, and ten points (an 8-2 UT lead). 

But while Tennessee (18-4, 6-2)  kicked into gear over the final 30 minutes of the game, the Gamecocks (13-9, 4-4) remained stuck in neutral against UT’s smothering man-to-man defense. 

“When we saw [man-to-man], we stood instead of moving,” Horn said. “We knew we were going to see that, but we just did not move the basketball well.”

UT’s Wayne Chism led all scorers with 30 points. The only Carolina player who was able to get much of anything going was Downey, who scored 26 points, but with 13 of them coming from the free throw line. Toward the end of the game, Horn talked to Downey and some other players. 

“We didn’t play well enough and didn’t deserve to have an opportunity to be in this game,” Horn said he told them. “Remember what this feeling feels like. We don’t want to be in this situation.”