LaShay Page named tournament’s Most Outstanding Player
Through the first six games of the season, a trend has developed for South Carolina.
The Gamecocks have made a habit of playing close games, already going to overtime twice this season and winning both.
Over Thanksgiving break, South Carolina won the Hoops for Hope Classic Championship in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in similar fashion.
It took overtime for the Gamecocks to pull off a 74-67 win over Missouri State Saturday, and USC held off Arkansas-Little Rock, 74-62, Sunday night to take the title and improve to 5-1 on the season.
In the championship game, USC held a commanding 39-22 lead over UALR at halftime and had a 55-28 lead with ten minutes to go in the game.
The Trojans went on a 34-19 run to tighten things up toward the end.
The game against Missouri State saw the return of freshman Michael Carrera, who missed three games with a concussion.
The Venezuela native made his presence known as he nailed his first 3-point attempt of the season as regulation time expired to send the game into overtime.
Carrera finished with 18 points and five rebounds while senior guard LaShay Page, who was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, led the team with 22 points and six rebounds in the victory.
In the title game, it was junior guard Brenton Williams leading USC with 17 points while senior forward Lakeem Jackson had 10 points and a career-high 15 rebounds.
The Gamecocks also suffered their first loss of the season this past week when they lost to Elon for the second straight year on Wednesday.
USC committed 22 turnovers in the 65-53 loss and 46 total in the two games in Mexico.
Last week, head coach Frank Martin said his team was playing with “fool’s gold” so far this season and it showed against the Phoenix.
“The game has a lot of things that you can control and it’s got one thing that you don’t control, and that’s the ball going in the basket,” Martin told reporters after the 88-76 win over Rider last Monday. “Right now, we are depending on the ball going in the basket to win and we are not controlling the things that we can control. That’s got to change.”
Martin said that the loss was expected with the way his team had been playing.
“We don’t defend and we don’t stick to the principles of our defensive philosophies,” Martin told reporters. “Offensively (against Rider) we didn’t stick to it, but we won so everyone thinks that it is nice and dandy.
“That’s the great thing about life is that you get what you deserve,” Martin continued. “And then when you get what you deserve, how are you going to respond? Are you going to change, accept and grow or are you going to run away from the truth? Let’s see how we handle this.”
USC will face its toughest test of the season so far on Thursday night when they travel to New York City to take on St. John’s in the SEC/Big East challenge.