Gamecocks look to avoid falling 0-5 in SEC play
USC coach Darrin Horn isn’t a fan of must-win games in the middle of the season, but after dropping four straight SEC games, he’s changed his tune.
“Do we need one? Absolutely. We need a win at some point,” Horn said. “Our guys, to their credit, have continued to come back and have a good attitude and work really hard. They’ve come out and started games well and do a lot of the areas well that we needed them to, but we’ve got to put the whole together and just understand that’s just how it is.”
As USC (8-10, 0-4 SEC) prepares to host Alabama (13-6, 2-3) tonight, the Gamecocks hope to erase the stain of the past two losses against Florida and Auburn, respectively, where USC held a halftime lead but entered a lull to start the second half. Against Florida, the Gators got on an 18-3 run after halftime, putting the Gamecocks in a hole they couldn’t climb out of. At Auburn, the Gamecocks took a four-point lead going into halftime, but trailed by 10 with 10 minutes left in the game.
After having lulls at the start of the second half in two straight games, USC has focused on preventing it in practice.
“We just kind of took a couple minutes off and worked, and then came back and worked on that lull and played the first four minutes,” Cooke said. “I think we got a lot out of it. We played really hard in it. We kind of got that second burst that we needed.”
How does USC prevent the scoring drought it’s experienced after halftime in the past two games?
“Just coming out firing and just staying focused and trying to get stops,” said forward Damontre Harris. “Whenever we get stops, that’s when our offense kind of flows. I think we’ve just got to defend, and everything else will fall in place.”
USC will be facing the No. 1 defense in the SEC against Alabama. In the loss to the Tigers, USC had 23 turnovers, which Horn said was the key to the loss.
“Not only was that an area that we had gotten better at, but taking care of the basketball had not been a concern,” Horn said. “We played, statistically, two of the top defensive teams in our league in Vanderbilt and Kentucky, and we had taken care of the ball pretty well in both games. Our averages were good, and we had eliminated those transition turnovers, for the most part. To do that in situations where it really hurts you, absolutely; it’s frustrating. I’d be lying to say that it isn’t, because we had a lot of other areas that we did really well. But if you turn the ball over 23 times in a game, you’ve got to do some other stuff, like, amazingly well to win the game. That’s true in every sport.”
For Cooke, it’s about recognizing the root of turnover and focusing on correcting it in practice.
“It’s just something we have to work on every day and get better at,” Cooke said. “We just have to be aware of it. We can’t have that many turnovers, and can’t expect to win a game.”
Especially against a defense like Alabama’s, USC will look to keep it simple.
“We’ve got to find a way to get some easy ones, whether that’s in transition or on the offensive glass — getting the ball inside and having some guys finish around the basket,” Horn said. “Alabama is extremely effective when their defense is set in the half court. They’re very big and physical, so in some way, we’ve got to find a way to get some baskets that are ones where you’re not going against their set defense all the time.”
While the Gamecocks have been able to fall back on the youth of the team as a reason for inconsistency from one half to the next, Harris no longer sees it as an excuse.
“We’re no longer a young team because everyone’s played enough games to kind of realize what’s kind of coming ahead of them,” Harris said. “I feel like we just need to mature a little bit better to do what we can do to win basketball games.”
With the maturity over the course of the season, the Gamecocks have also learned how to respond to the losses.
“I think the confidence level is still pretty high,” Harris said. “We understand that we lost four games straight, but that makes us want to work even harder to get a win. So I think we just need to stay focused and do the things we’ve been doing.”
And while the confidence level is up, the frustration level isn’t down. Although, Horn has praised the team for coming to practice with good attitudes despite the losses.
“It’s pretty frustrating for the simple fact that we’re on a losing streak right now,” Harris said. “Like coach said, we need to keep our head up, continue to play hard and compete. It’ll come around.”