Looking for a victory to salvage an already shaky start to its conference schedule, South Carolina traveled to Oxford, Mississippi.
The Gamecocks instead found a humbling defeat as the Rebels took the win with the final score of 65-49.
“We’ve had a bad week,” head coach Frank Martin said. “Don’t discredit Ole Miss; they’re at a very high level, but we’ve had a bad week.”
Alluding to the loss against Florida earlier in the week breaking their winning streak of seven straight games, Martin said South Carolina's tumble against the Rebels set the Gamecocks back even further.
“We obviously didn’t handle success very well and now we are back to square one," he said.
The Gamecocks (9-5, 0-2 SEC) struggled throughout the first half against The Rebels (10-5, 1-1 SEC). Ole Miss was ready to bring the intensity needed to keep the victory in their house, and the Gamecocks never took the lead at any point during the game.
The Gamecocks did manage to keep the score close in first half with only a six points difference of 27-33 in favor of the Rebels going into halftime.
Although the Gamecocks showed the fire in the beginning, Martin described it as “phony energy” that quickly escaped them by the beginning of the second half.
At the start of the second half, the Gamecocks tied the game at 33 but quickly lost their chances when Ole Miss scored 12 points in the next three minutes with simple mistakes. The Gamecocks finished with 20 personal fouls and 15 turnovers compared to the Rebels 14 personal fouls and 10 turnovers.
Leading scorer for the Gamecocks was senior Tyrone Johnson with 13 points. Following Johnson with nine points each were sophomores Sindarius Thornwell and Duane Notice.
“The game’s real and the game’s strong," Martin said. "If you’re not mentally prepared, you can’t sustain and that’s exactly what happened to us.”
Ole Miss had a way of paying attention to details, according to Martin, saying the Gamecocks were “not being good players, and when you’re not a good player, you will pay, and that’s exactly what happened to us.”
Ole Miss brought a lot to the table coming off its heartbreaking loss against Kentucky, and Martin was impressed with the amount of skill Ole Miss brought on the court.
“They don’t whine and pout — they play," he said. "They’re all long and athletic, and when they get in that half-court trap, you’ve got to be clean on your decision making and attack them, and we were never clean.”
South Carolina is now 0-2 in the SEC with more games quickly rounding the corner leaving no time for mistakes.
"We’ve got to search and figure out who we want to be," Martin said. "We’ve got to be the guys who are excited about playing and sacrificing for one another that made us a halfway decent basketball team, or do we want to be the guys who are lifeless, unenthused, excuse-making, which is what we’ve been all week.”
The Gamecocks will face Alabama at Colonial Life Arena Tuesday when they meet the Crimson Tide for the first time this season.