Nov. 20, 2011

Recap | Final Stats

South Carolina Head Coach Darrin Horn
Opening Statement
The game was obviously a tale of two halves. In the first half we did not play well in any facet of the game, and in the second I think we played like we are capable of, but when you dig yourself the hole we did it was just too late. You have to give credit to Tennessee State, they played well. They made two huge 3s at crucial points. Those were some huge shots and they made them when they needed too. I thought we saw some good things in some guys coming off the bench like Eric Smith, the way he shot the ball, the confidence he played with and RJ Slawson was outstanding as well, but we’ve got to learn, which apparently we didn’t from our first loss earlier in the week, but we’ve got to be a team that does the little things to be our best. We’ve got to do things like take care of the basketball.

On the first half…
You name it and it was a problem for us. We didn’t play well. Defensively we had some lapses and on offense we just didn’t take care of the basketball and that obviously hurt us only scoring 19 in the first half.

Tennessee State Head Coach John Cooper
On getting first win over an SEC opponent…
It’s a win, if you’re going to be any good you’ve got to win on the road and obviously we’re typically going to play all SEC teams in their place so that makes it tougher, but I’ll take it. I kid you not, I’ll take any of the wins we get because they are all hard to come by.

On South Carolina coming back in the second half and being able to keep the lead…
I thought a couple of times we got some buckets at key times. I thought Patrick Miller stepped up and hit a big 3, I thought Wil Peters hit a big 3 right there in front of our bench. I thought every guy did a little bit of something. We had some turnovers that were really costly and we just lost our way, we lost our wits but we found a way.