South Carolina falls to No. 1 Kentucky 86-52
The cliché in football is that it's a game of inches.
It was a game of inches for South Carolina basketball on Saturday night — 1.6 inches to be exact. The average height of the Kentucky starting lineup, 78.4 inches, is exactly 1.6 inches taller than the USC lineup, 76.8.
The tallest starter for the Wildcats, freshman forward Anthony Davis, is a towering 82 inches, nearly five inches taller than the average Gamecock starter.
Davis also has a reported 88-inch wingspan, making him a mismatch for any basketball team, especially the Gamecocks.
Just a couple of inches were enough for the Wildcats (23-1, 9-0) to put a 33-point beating on USC (9-13, 1-7 SEC), as Davis finished with 22 points, eight blocks and eight rebounds in the 86-52 victory, the worst loss for the Gamecocks since playing Kentucky in 2007.
"I think he's a difference maker," said USC coach Darrin Horn. "I'm not so sure he's not arguably the best player in college basketball because of his ability to impact the game on both ends. A few times our defense was adequate on the drive. Being able to just throw it up over top to him makes it difficult, and we didn't do as good a job as we needed to defending that, but he just brings so much to the table in how he affects the game on both ends."
His presence was clearly felt by USC, as in the second half, senior Malik Cooke pump faked twice with Davis defending him before passing the ball to someone else. Cooke said Davis is always someone to be aware of when driving to the basket, but Davis, who had seven dunks in the game, stayed humble.
"It's not just me," Davis said. "It's the other players as well — Terrence Jones, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Darius Miller— coming in blocking shots from the weak side as well. Coach tells us to put your hands up and not foul because we're going to get a block from the weak side. I just waited for him to shoot the ball, but he never shot it. I wasn't even going to try to block it. I was going to keep my hands up and have somebody try to block it from the weak side."
The Gamecocks were also hurt by the absence of sophomore forward Damontre Harris, who picked up two early fouls and had to go to the bench. He picked up his third foul just two minutes after being subbed in, putting him back on the bench until the second half.
"The way the game was going, that was a risk we were willing to take to put him back in there," Horn said. "We didn't guard the dribble well enough, which put him in some fast decisions on a couple of those fouls. I thought the first one was questionable, and that's going to happen, but the second two, he got caught trying to rotate to take away the dribble penetration, but right now he's a difference maker for us."
When Harris picked up his third foul, Kentucky had a 25-15 lead. With him on the bench for the remainder of the half, the Wildcats finished with a 27-10 run to take a 52-25 lead into halftime.
Furthermore, the margin of defeat could be nearly accounted for in the deficit of points in the paint for USC, where Kentucky had a 42-14 advantage, likely because of the size inside with Jones and Davis.
"I didn't think we guarded the dribble like we needed to," Horn said. "We gave them some easy ones early and offensively we were very stagnant. Had we been able to get some baskets and have a couple of shots go down, there is no question that it would have changed the flow of things."
With the deficit so great at halftime, Horn, who suffered the worst loss of his coaching career Saturday, didn't see the same fight in his team in the second half as he did against Florida, where the Gamecocks were able to get it to a two-possession game.
"When the score is what it is at halftime and you've got a young team and you're playing a team the caliber of Kentucky, that's a little hard to do," Horn said. "Our guys came out and gave good effort, but the game was too much to overcome."
Horn pointed to the youth of the squad in not playing with the same fight early on and stressed wanting to move forward from the loss as it travels to Tennessee next, but in a game that came down to inches, USC feels miles from where it had hoped to be by this point in the season.
"The challenge of the first eight we have had — it has been well documented — was what our slate has been like," Horn said. "We have to go on the road for two after a game like this. It is going to be a challenge without question, but we have got too keep plugging."