NASHVILLE — There were questions pre-season. How would South Carolina hold up inside? Can a collection of unproven post players stand up to the weight of SEC play? Will this be a guard-heavy team?
In fairness to all who asked those questions about South Carolina men’s basketball in October, nobody knew just how great Collin Murray-Boyles would be.
The true freshman sensation has been a key cog in South Carolina’s resurgent season, and ripped off 24 points on 11-of-15 shooting with seven rebounds in his first career postseason game as the Gamecocks defeated Arkansas 80-66 in the second round of the SEC Tournament.
“My teammates really just getting in the right spots,” Murray-Boyles said was the key to his performance. “Hitting me when they see I got a good chance to get around the basket and score a lot.”
Murray-Boyles was the most frequent Gamecock to walk up to treat the Arkansas (16-17) like an ATM, proverbially sliding in the credit card to receive two points with unlimited transactions. It happened 26 times in total, accounting for 52 points in the paint.
Heading into the game South Carolina’s (26-6) season high for points in the paint was 44, and even that was in an overtime win over Mississippi State. In regulation games, 40 was the ceiling. But along with B.J. Mack and Josh Gray, who combined for 27 points and 11 rebounds, South Carolina spent its afternoon kicking Arkansas up and down the painted area and finding every look it wanted.
Gray himself dunked four times, to say nothing of the three other jams from his teammates and the 14 total layups — many of which came via brute force — South Carolina wracked up points on.
"They kept switching the ball screens,” Gray said. “So we just ran our action and I got the mismatch. I was able to use my wide frame to get a good seal, an angled seal. I didn't have to use any moves, just pivot and dunk."
It is impossible to win 26 games without depth and flexibility. Every opponent is a new challenge, a new puzzle to solve. It is only heightened in the postseason when you have one, or in a conference tournament’s case, less than one day to prepare for the next match-up.
Thursday was an extreme example of one side of a team carrying the other. While the three post players pushed everyone around, South Carolina’s guards had an uncharacteristically bad afternoon. Meechie Johnson never really found his form with six points on 10 shots, and Jacobi Wright did not score at all on his five attempts. Ta’Lon Cooper’s usual skyscraping assist numbers reached the lofty heights of three, partly a combination of how Arkansas defended him and the overall struggles shooting outside.
And yet, Cooper, Johnson and the rest of South Carolina’s starters spent the closing minutes on the bench as the Gamecocks had long-since relegated the game to garbage time.
The Gamecocks take out Arkansas 80-66 in the second round of the SEC Tournament, advancing to play Auburn in tomorrow's quarterfinals. We had open locker room, and here are some quotes from the players about the game today and what lies ahead tomorrow.
Josh Gray:
Laughed saying the Arkansas game last year was his last time he had at least four dunks in a game.
On worked so well inside:
"They kept switching the ball screens, so we just ran out action and I got the mismatch and I was able to use my wide frame to get a good seal, an angled seal. I didn't have to use any moves, just pivot and dunk."
On how different this feels than last year:
"It's not like I haven't been here before (laughing), but it's been awhile since I've been here before. My freshman year at my old school, but for the first time in two years we made it past the first game, and it feels pretty good. High sports. I don't get to go home tomorrow, thank goodness. We get to continue to playy another game in contention for an SEC Championship."
(He was referencing getting an SEC Tournament win in his freshman year at LSU here, in fact getting all the way to the title game with the Tigers).
Ebrima Dibba:
On how he feels physically:
"It's getting better and better. I still have a long way to go, but I'm just happy to be out there and blessed to be out there. I'm just taking it game by game and day by day."
On his SEC Tournament experience:
"It's been great, man. Happy to be here. It's a good environment, good team, so I'm just excited to see what's next."
On worked so well in the paint:
"Just playing together and staying with it. We never stopped."
Myles Stute:
On how his knee feels (he played with a brace on his left knee again today, as he has the last three games):
"It's alright, it's coming along. Day-to-day it's getting better and better, so I'm just trying to get things going."
Says it is "far better" than it was at this time last week.
On playing in Nashville for the first time since transferring from Vanderbilt:
"It was fun, definitely to come back out here in a city I know good and well and to see these rims at Bridgestone again. I definitely had a great time, and I'm glad we got the win."
On what worked so well today:
"You've definitely got to go hats off to CMB and B.J. tonight. They held it down in the paint. They rebounded the crap out of the ball tonight, shot really well tonight, were really physical. With those to guys down there and JG having a really good tonight as well, that definitely just contributed to our success tonight in the paint."
On if tomorrow is a revenge game:
"Nameless, faceless. You definitely want to get al little bit back for what happened earlier in the season, but at the same time you want to go into every game the same even-keel and just ready to play."
Meechie Johnson:
On what was working so well in the paint:
"When your shot's not falling on the outside, you have a great presence on the inside. B.J. Mack, Josh Gray and Collin Murray-Boyles stepped up big today. That's the point of having a great team. Like I said before, anybody can have any night, and that's what showed today."
"It's a revenge game for sure. We know that this is a great team. It's not going to be easy at all with great players, but this is a game where we're looking for revenge 100 percent."
"I've been saying it before, he's a man child. He's got great touch around the rim, and he shows that. He's been showing that ever since he came back. I tell people if it wasn't what he went for at the beginning of the year,r he would have won freshman of the year to me. Very efficient, and he shows that every game."
Ta'Lon Cooper:
On what worked so well today:
"Our defense. We feel like defense leads to offense, and if we kept getting stops our offense would take care of itself. That, and punching the ball in the paint."
On the game overall:
"We came out pretty flat. We can't really do that much. But we came out in the we were like, 'Hey, we've got to pick it up. We can't let them get the momentum anymore.' We had to put them away early."
On if tomorrow is another game or a revenge game:
"It's a little bit of both. It's another game, but at the end of the day we know what they did to us."
Zachary Davis:
On what worked so well today:
"Just being solid on defense and just forcing the issue in the paint. We realized we had a lot of mismatches there, and inside was working. It was just getting inside, playing inside out. That really was working."
On when the game changed:
"We did start off flat. I think we had a media timeout and coach just said we were playing too casual, so after that we just took it like, okay, we've got to turn up, lock in and just be mad physical. We wanted to be mad physical and be solid on defense. Being solid on defense turned into transition points and runs, so the defense really started it."
On if tomorrow is a revenge game:
"You can say it's a revenge game, but it's just playing the next game onto the next round. They did what they did to us in the last game and we have that in the back of our head, but it's just going onto the next game, playing solid and doing what we do."
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