Sept. 18, 2005

Columbia, SC – After consulting with both schools, the Southeastern Conference has announced it will move the South Carolina men’s basketball game at Georgia from Wednesday, Feb. 22 to Thursday, Feb. 23 so the two teams can play on ESPN at 7 pm. South Carolina now has at least five nationally-televised games on its schedule this year – four on ESPN (three on ESPN, one on ESPN2) and one on CBS. In addition, if South Carolina plays in the semi-finals or finals at the Great Alaska Shootout (Nov. 24-26), those games will also be shown on ESPN2.

South Carolina will play every home SEC game on television, with four games on Jefferson-Pilot, two games on ESPN and one game each on CBS and Fox Sports Net South. All told, USC will play at least 16 games on television during the 2005-06 regular season, including 13 games during the SEC slate.

South Carolina, the 2005 NIT Champions, return four starters this season on a team that USC Head Coach Dave Odom calls his deepest team since he has come to Carolina.

“This is our deepest team,” said Odom. “Most of the teams that I’ve coached, you always have one or two guys on your team that for whatever reason you don’t have the confidence to put them in during prime time. I don’t think there’s anybody on our team this year that I would cringe if they had to go into the game when the game’s on the line. At this point, I’ve got total confidence in everyone of those guys that they can play at the most important time of the most important game of the season, until somebody proves differently. And they might, but ability wise, from an athletic standpoint, from a skill standpoint, I’m very very pleased with this team.”

For a link to the updated schedule, Click Here.