Dec. 28, 2011

Recap | Final Stats

South Carolina Head Coach Darin Horn
Opening Statement…
We had really good production from our bench. There are a lot of positives we can take from this game. We came into the game really wanting to focus on defending the 3-point line. Especially with (Kevin) Giltner and (Karl) Cochran, they have shot the ball really well and been important to their offense. Overall they shot 26 percent from 3 and only made five 3s. I thought that was a huge key to the game. I thought that was a good job of our guys to focus on that defending. Especially inside the stretch in the last three minutes, we had some really outstanding defensive possessions. Offensively I thought we were a little sloppy at times. At the same time, we have 20 field goals and 13 of them are assisted. We did make a lot of shots; I think we made a lot of shots because we moved the ball well. We took really good ones. It was great to see Bruce (Ellington) find his shooting touch and what a response by Damien Leonard. He sits over on the bench for I don’t know how many minutes for a stretch, and we put him in because Wofford stayed zone. They had been switching the defense, but they stuck with it during that stretch and we were having a hard time scoring. He comes in cold and just knocks down two, like in shooting practice. It was good to see us make shots like that as well. I thought Malik Cooke did an outstanding job in a game where your leading scorer and senior leader’s going to have a night like that a few nights a year. He was not good offensively, but I thought especially in the last few minutes his great presence and leadership was really good defensively. Anthony Gill was rebound-less, at the half. He goes out and grabs eight in the second half. Damontre Harris, I don’t think you can say enough about his game. His stat line is really unbelievable if you look at all the columns he filled up and how he impacted the game. There were a lot of positive things. RJ Slawson, I thought looked more like RJ tonight. All in all, it was a total team effort, some positives to find in a game where maybe you are not as strong as you want to be. Obviously, we need to rebound the basketball better, and we are going to rebound better on Saturday. I feel pretty confident that that will be a big focus point for us in the next few days. In a game where you don’t rebound well and your leading scorer doesn’t score and you’re still able to win by double digits, we’ll take that as a positive and keep building.

On Damien Leonard’s improvement shooting the basketball…
I don’t know that it is a ton. I think that if you had to pinpoint something it would be that he is making the shots that he is taking. Just being more ready to shoot. Being down and ready, he obviously has a tremendous stroke. I think that all the shooters, not just him, are excited that they are open and don’t prepare to shoot. I think he is doing a better job of that. I’m not surprised that he is shooting the ball the way he is. If you count tonight, I don’t know what it is total, but he is probably mid 40s (percentage) in the last four or five games if you throw tonight’s game in there.

Wofford Head Coach Mike Young
Thoughts on the game…
It was a four-point game with less than eight minutes to play, so it comes down to a cluster of plays. There were four to six plays that would either have gotten us out of here with a win or if not then they’ll get you with a loss. The made 3 from Leonard that took the lead from four to seven points was critical. We’ve got to get a little bit tougher and smarter, and when we do that we’re going to be fine. We made some strides tonight. I thought we’d come here and win the game, but credit South Carolina and Coach (Darrin) Horn, obviously they did more good things than we did.

Thoughts on Wofford out-rebounding South Carolina…
It pleases me. We out-rebounded them by eight, but it is what it is. We have to toughen up, and in critical possessions we have some things we need to smoothen out. We competed but we’ve got to play better.

On getting ready for the next game against Wake Forest…
We’ll watch this game tomorrow and go practice. We’ll go to Wake Forest on Monday and try to be there at the end and give ourselves a shot and hopefully make four or five of those critical plays that we didn’t tonight.