Dec. 5, 2015

Final Stats | USATSI Gallery

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina men’s basketball program matched its best start in 12 years thanks to a dominant first-half effort Saturday afternoon against South Florida (2-7). The Gamecocks won 81-63 behind a season-high 19 points from Michael Carrera, surviving a bumpy second half to move to 8-0 this season.

Despite matching up with perhaps their most physical opponent of the season to date, the Gamecocks went to their bread and butter early, slashing to the basket to take a 16-2 lead just five minutes into the game, forcing a timeout. Of those 16 points, 12 would come in the paint and six came off the fast break. South Carolina shot 78 percent to USF’s 14, and had a 7-1 advantage in rebounds leading up to the USF timeout.

Carolina would not relent after the timeout, extending the run all the way out to 24-2 before USF broke a seven-minute scoring drought with a basket at the 12:03 mark of the first half. The Bulls made a switch to a 2-3 zone defense and would find more success at slowing down the drives, but would not find as easy of a solution on offense and didn’t reach double digits until the 8:45 mark.

On the back of an 8-0 run to end the first half, the Gamecocks went into the break with their largest lead of the afternoon at 53-22. Carolina would see three different players reach double figures in scoring, led by 13 from Sindarius Thornwell. As a team, the Garnet and Black shot 61 percent from the field (20-33) and scored 19 points off 12 USF turnovers.

The lead would expand to 36, 61-25, but the Bulls would respond with a 17-2 run over the next four minutes thanks to a 1-of-7 field goal slump from Carolina. The key for USF would be rebounding, as it enjoyed a 20-7 margin on the boards that allowed it to out-score Carolina by 13 points through the first 12 minutes of the second half.

The first-half domination by the Gamecocks would be too much to recover from for USF, despite a complete turnaround of fortunes. The Bulls could get no closer than 13, with the Gamecocks leaning on nine second-half points from Carrera to hold down the fort. The defense held USF without a field goal for the final 4:09 of the game to secure the team’s fourth straight win by 15 points or more.

GAMECHANGER

After allowing USF its first field goal of the game at the 19:14 mark, South Carolina held the Bulls scoreless for the next 7:09 while going on a 19-0 run in the same span. The Bulls missed ten straight shots and committed five turnovers during the Gamecocks’ run.

KEY STAT

A big factor in South Carolina’s run-and-gun, high-efficiency offense in the first half was converting off turnovers. In the opening half, the Gamecocks score 19 points off 12 turnovers, and finished with 27 points off 19 turnovers for the game. Conversely, USF would only score eight points of 12 Gamecock turnovers.

UP NEXT

South Carolina will have a 10-day break for final exams before Drexel travels to Columbia on Dec. 15. The matchup vs. the Dragons will tip at 7 p.m. ET on SEC Network +. The meeting will be the first all-time between the two schools.

NOTABLE

• Today’s matchup is believed to be the first-ever meeting between two team’s coached by first-generation Hispanic Americans.
• Behind his 15 points, junior Sindarius Thornwell now has 913 points in his career. With 23 games left in the regular season, Thornwell needs to average just 3.8 points per game the rest of the way to become the first Gamecock since Dominique Archie in 2010 to reach 1,000 career points.
• Saturday was the first time all season that the Gamecocks were out-rebounded in a game this season. The Bulls held a 46-32 advantage, holding South Carolina to its lowest total of the season.
• Michael Carrera now has back-to-back games with three 3-pointers made. He has 13 so far this season, already a career high. He made 12 all of last season (30 games). His .590 3-point field goal percentage so far this season has already lifted his career average from .291 coming into the season to .351.
• With the 8-0 start, the team has matched the program’s best start in the SEC era with the 2003-04 Gamecocks. One more win would put them in even more rarified air, joining the 1970-71 team at 9-0. The program’s overall best start of 17-0 is held by the 1933-34 team.
• Redshirt Freshman TeMarcus Blanton tallied his first points as a Gamecock, hitting a pair of free throws late in the second half. He would also record his first rebound while playing six minutes.

Quotable: Head Coach Frank Martin

Opening statement
“I’m really proud of the way we came out and played today, and hopefully we can use the second half to learn. Part of the maturity of a basketball team is to understand all situations and never take anything for granted. All we did at halftime was talk about playing the game the right way in the second half, don’t take the game for granted, play the right way, and we did the complete opposite. That was disappointing, but it is what it is, and it’s another win.”

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