Transfer stars in first game at Carolina
Before the start of the season, sophomore junior college transfer Brenton Williams acquired the nickname "Bill" from teammates Eric Smith and Brian Richardson for an unusual reason.
"The nickname Bill started a couple weeks ago because my teammates said I look like a cartoon character called 'Little Bill,'" recalled Williams, laughing. "It's stuck since then. They call me Bill more than my real name."
Just as Little Bill is the smallest in his family in the Nick Jr. television series, Williams was the smallest player on the court for the Gamecocks. But Williams didn't play like the smallest guy on the court in South Carolina's 75-50 victory on Friday, finishing with 13 points to lead the Gamecock bench, which finished with 38. Williams, 5-foot-11 and 172 pounds, also pulled down two defensive rebounds and tallied five steals and an assist.
"Brenton's all over the place all the time," said freshman forward Anthony Gill. "In the last game he dove into the crowd and hit the Gatorade over, for example. And he ran into the crowd today, so if he wants the ball, he can go get it. It definitely helps us out a lot."
With just more than 12 minutes left in the game, Williams dove for a jump ball at midcourt, prompting coach Darrin Horn to jump out of his seat and yell, "Good hustle!"
"We know that he can shoot and that he's athletic and can score the basket, but I think where he impacted the score tonight was defensively," Horn said. "He got on the floor for that one loose ball, which was terrific. I think it ended up being a jump ball — it was just great effort and activity. That's how we have to play to be successful. I think our second group was a good model of that tonight."
In a game of two units, Williams shined the brightest as the model on a second unit that outscored the starters, though Horn has emphasized that starters are irrelevant with this particular group. Against Western Carolina, he proved prophetic, as no player finished with less than 16 minutes or more than 23 minutes.
"We're going to be our best if everybody plays well," Horn said. "If you look at our roster, we don't have five seniors who have been through the wars, and so we can't go out there and think those guys are good and everybody else just have to give a few minutes. In order for us to be our best, we need solid if not significant contributions from our seven, eight or nine guys. I've said from the beginning that I'm not really concerned about starters."
The Gamecocks trailed 5-3 after five minutes of play when Horn subbed in his second group, which went on to take a 16-14 lead before Horn put his first team back in.
"We didn't come out with the energy that we needed to," Gill said. "We go off deflections — that's what we rate our defense on — and we only had two deflections in that first group. That second group turned it around, and that's what we needed for our team. We build as a team."
The Gamecocks played as a team, even before the tipoff. Williams, who said he's gotten used to his nickname, was calmed by his teammates in pregame warm-ups, who told him not to worry about the bright lights and to just focus on his role.
The bright lights are something Williams could get used to, though.