Once the ball left Anthony Polite’s hand, all James Reese and the four other Gamecocks could do is box out.
If the ball went in, the Gamecocks would walk away losers and have squandered a seven-point lead with five to play.
But as the ball bounded off the backboard and away as the buzzer sounded, South Carolina stormed the court and celebrated a 66-65 win over the Seminoles in what is one of the marquee wins of the season for Frank Martin and his team.
“Hoo. I mean honestly I was a little nervous. Number 10 is a great three-point shooter. I mean, the only thing going on in my mind was a stop. At that point when the ball went off his hands we couldn’t do anything,” Reese said. “The time ran out and he missed. We just live with that."
The Gamecocks (7-2) trailed by as many as 16 points thanks to early stagnation on both ends and Reese—along with Wildens Leveque and Erik Stevenson—battling foul trouble.
But, thanks to flipping the switch defensively, South Carolina was able to chip and chisel itself back into the game and close it to just a six-point deficit at the half while holding Florida State without a field goal for the final 6:29 before the break.
Freshman Devin Carter buoyed the offense in the first half, scoring six of his 16 points and helped keep the Gamecocks afloat there.
Carter finished with a game-high in points on 6-for-12 shooting and got to the line a team-best seven times, making four of them with three critical points down the stretch after Florida State tied the game late in the second half.
“I love to have the ball in my hands at the end of the game. Everybody trusts me and I can’t let my teammates down. I don’t really feel pressure like that in those moments.”
Once the second half started, it turned into the Reese show as he almost single-handily brought the Gamecocks back and help them take the lead.
He scored all 13 of his points in the second half, including going on an 8-0 run by himself with two three-pointers to give South Carolina a lead where the Gamecocks would never trail again.
“I was just out there playing hard and doing what I do. The coaches always tell me to shoot it when I’m open and kind of hold back from that. My teammates just found me. I just started playing real hard and the ball ended up in my hands and going in the basket for me.”
Things got interesting late with Florida State using a 7-0 run and a Gamecock field goal drought of over four minutes to tie the game and a few key mistakes from South Carolina.
The Seminoles were able to take the final shot but it bounded out as South Carolina picked up a big win to push the win streak to two games after dropping a road game to Coastal.
It was a game South Carolina didn’t put together an other-worldly performance—shooting just 44.1 percent from the field, 28.6 percent from three and 50 percent from the line—but they outrebounded a bigger Florida State team by five and held the Seminoles to just 31.8 percent shooting in the second half.
A lot of it was a switch to zone as the Gamecocks put together their big win.
“That was part of the plan coming into the game. Their size on the perimeter and ball screen offense and spacing was going to attack us. When we got in foul trouble early in the game we went to it. The plan was to go to it eventually,” Frank Martin said.
“I don’t usually stay in a zone too long but I thought we got them to stop being aggressive, I’m talking about Florida State. We got them a little passive. It gave us life so I stayed in it and milked that thing until the end of the game.”
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