Muldrow’s triple-double propels USC to overtime upset of No. 22 Vanderbilt
When asked to discuss his 10th block of the game, which came with only a second left on the clock, Sam Muldrow broke it down in pretty rudimentary terms.
“I just blocked it,” Muldrow said, a big grin breaking across his face.
Just as simple as that, Muldrow earned the second triple-double in USC history, helping catapult the Gamecocks to an 83-75 overtime upset of No. 22 Vanderbilt to open the SEC season.
“It’s a great feeling,” Muldrow said.
With the achievement, Muldrow joined Chuck Eidson as the only Gamecocks to accomplish such a feat. Eidson recorded his triple-double in 2002. Muldrow finished with 16 points and 14 rebounds to go along with the 10 blocks.
“You can’t say enough about Sam Muldrow, getting a triple-double the hard way — with blocks,” USC coach Darrin Horn said. “It’s just unbelievable. Keep in mind he did that picking up his fourth foul with 4:53 on the clock, so he played almost 10 minutes, and I think had four or five blocks after that point.”
While the final score may make it the Gamecocks won comfortably once they got to the extra period, the road they took to the win was anything but, as USC trailed Vanderbilt (11-3, 0-1 SEC) by as many as 14 points with as few as 14 minutes left to play in the game.
The South Carolina comeback was triggered after Lakeem Jackson drilled a 3-pointer with 12:14 left to play to cut the deficit to nine.
“I had time to line it up,” Jackson said. “All my teammates tell me that when I have time to line it up, to just let it go, and usually it’s going in.”
From there the Gamecocks were able to build momentum, as Bruce Ellington was able to bring the deficit down to six with a 3-pointer several possessions later.
Following a Vanderbilt timeout, Muldrow blocked a Commodore shot, with Malik Cooke collecting the rebound. Ellington knocked down one of his six career-high 3-pointers to make the deficit three with over six minutes remaining.
Following a series of Vanderbilt free-throws, Ellington made another three to make it a two-point game. Festus Ezeli got a dunk for Vanderbilt to put the Commodores up by four, but another 3-pointer by Ellington on the following possession made it a one-point game.
Cooke was fouled on the following offensive possession, and after making one of two free-throws, the game was tied for the first time. Cooke finished with 13 points and eight points coming off the bench.
“I actually thought Cooke was a guy that came in and impacted the game in the second half as much as anybody on the team,” Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said. “I thought he played with good physicality and I thought he was a good player.”
Vanderbilt’s John Jenkins, who led all scorers with 27 points, made three free-throw shots after getting fouled from beyond-the-arc to give the Commodores a three-point lead on Vandy’s next trip down the court, but Ellington came through once again on the next possession, knocking down another three to tie the game at 72, sending it into overtime.
Ellington finished with a team-high 22 points. While the Gamecocks (10-4, 1-0 SEC) had a shooting percentage of 25 percent from 3-point range in the first half, the made 46.7 percent of their 3-pointers in the second half.
USC carried the momentum into overtime, where it was able to outscore Vanderbilt 11-3.
The win marked only the second time the Gamecocks defeated the Commodores when they were ranked, with the first coming in last season’s regular season finale in Nashville, when Vandy was No. 14.