Ole Miss cools off South Carolina in Oxford, snaps Gamecocks’ win streak
Frank Martin warned of this.
The South Carolina coach said well before Wednesday’s tip-off to look beyond Ole Miss’ record and see how the Rebels were competing on their home floor. He pointed to their recent heartbreaking losses to SEC contenders LSU and Auburn as reasons for the Gamecocks to be on guard as they entered The Pavilion.
USC, a team with an eye toward the top of the league standings, never led against a team hovering above the bottom.
The Rebels beat the Gamecocks, 84-70, in wire-to-wire fashion Wednesday, delivering the kind of performance Carolina fans were getting used to seeing from their squad.
South Carolina’s win streak is over at three games. The Gamecocks are now 13-9 overall and 5-4 in the SEC. Ole Miss improved to 11-11 and 2-7 in the league.
“They’ve been right there, especially here at home, all year,” Martin said. “They lost some hard, hard games here at home that they could have very easily won. Give them credit. They protected their home court.”
The Rebels finally got a home SEC win after previous attempts included a four-point loss to conference-leading LSU and a double overtime loss to No. 16 Auburn. These were the efforts, Martin felt, that made the Rebels plenty capable of cooling off his Gamecocks.
South Carolina didn’t do much to help itself out. Playing without defensive stalwart Justin Minaya (hand injury), USC struggled defending Ole Miss’ potent backcourt. Rebel guards Devonte Shuler (Irmo), Breein Tyree and Blake Hinson combined for 58 points. Ole Miss made 11 of its first 15 field goal attempts.
“We weren’t very good,” Martin said. “We had no toughness, no discipline to us today. But credit to Ole Miss.”
Tyree, who drew a variety of USC defenders, had 38 himself, the most by an opposing player this season.
“He’s the leading scorer in the league and we acted like we didn’t know that in our scouting report,” Martin said. “He led his team and that’s what senior guards do.”
USC, which entered as the SEC’s leader in field goal percentage defense, saw the Rebels shoot 47%. Their 84 points were the most by a Gamecock opponent this season.
That balanced offense was more than enough to offset Jermaine Couisnard’s scoring career night. The redshirt freshman continued his string of good play with 28 points, 20 coming in the second half as the Gamecocks tried to rally from a 19-point deficit.
“Attacking the rim,” Couisnard said of his approach. The redshirt freshman took 13 free throws.
A pair of Keyshawn Bryant free throws cut the Ole Miss lead to 10 with under five minutes left, but the Rebels responded with six straight points to put things away.
Maik Kotsar was Carolina’s only other double-digit scorer with 19.
“We were embarrassingly bad in practice on Monday,” Martin said. “Like, we could have brought kindergarten guys in to practice and they could have practiced better than we did.”
And one: For only the second time this season, South Carolina made over 75% of its free throws while taking at least 20 of them.
Personal foul: A.J. Lawson and Jair Bolden went a combined 2 of 12 from the field and scored five points.
Tip-in: Wednesday was “Morgan Freeman Night” at The Pavilion. Freeman, the legendary actor with an iconic voice, was born in nearby Memphis and is a longtime Rebels fan.
Wednesday’s early arrivals received Freeman bobbleheads while Ole Miss students wore Freeman-themed T-shirts and the Rebel players had “M. Freeman” on the back of their warm-up shirts.
Freeman was in attendance and addressed fellow Rebel fans before tip-off.
NEXT
What: Texas A&M at South Carolina
When: 1 p.m. Saturday
Where: Colonial Life Arena
TV: SEC Network
Radio: 107.5 The Game in Columbia area
