The man famous for his Q-zips secured a Q1 win.
On a chamber of commerce night at Colonial Life Arena that brought out Shane Beamer, Dawn Staley, Aliyah Boston and dignitaries from every other corner of Gamecock land, South Carolina men’s basketball1 shook the sport more than it has in over a decade.
The largest student crowd in South Carolina men’s basketball history watched the Gamecocks take down No. 6 Kentucky 79-62, the unquestioned biggest win of the Lamont Paris era and many years before that for a perpetually downtrodden program.
Streak-snappers tell the story of the win and the attached catharsis better than anything between the lines.
South Carolina (16-3, 4-2 SEC) came into play with nine straight home losses against ranked teams dating back four years, 15 straight losses against ranked teams overall dating back to before the Paris era and a whopping 21 consecutive defeats against top-6 teams all went by the boards in one swift domination against the league’s powerhouse.
Kentucky’s (14-4, 4-2 SEC) nation-leading scoring offense had no answers all night. The group that hung 105 points on Georgia just three days ago and had scored at least 80 in all but one outing this season found every cut blocked, every shot contested and no room to operate down low even with a trio of seven-footers for South Carolina to battle.
Mostly even proceedings through the first dozen minutes gave way to a 17-4 South Carolina run going into the locker room spurred on by the defense. A lineup featuring wings Zachary Davis and Morris Ugusuk combined with Ta’Lon Cooper, B.J. Mack and super freshman Colin Murray-Boyles held the Wildcats off the scoreboard for over three minutes while the offense took control.
Jacobi Wright had the biggest hand in that, knocking down his first four 3-point attempts of the night to inject life into the game — and the crowd — off the bench. He scored 14 points overall and joined forces with Ta’Lon Cooper, the Minnesota transfer who took over his first crack at Kentucky with 20 points and head-swiveling passes all night.
It was his season-high in points, exactly the type of night he envisioned when he transferred back to his home state.
And when Davis, a defensive ace who started SEC play just 1-of-10 from 3-point range, pocked a 3-pointer to beat the first half buzzer and give the Gamecocks their largest lead of the game at eight, the scent of an upset evolved from possible to intoxicating.
It is a feeling fans in Columbia have gotten somewhat familiar with over the last 14 months with football and baseball springing upsets over top-5 teams at home against Tennessee and LSU, but it was a fresh feeling in this space.
Each second half bucket lifted the mission closer to reality, and brought the blacked-out crowd into something more resembling a basketball carnival than what should have been a nail-biting win.
Meechie Johnson — you knew he had to get involved — curled off a screen and buried a 3-pointer to take the lead to 13. Josh Gray, the one who missed five straight free throws in a five-point home loss last Tuesday, powered through Kentucky’s 7-foot-2 Croatian sensation Zvonimir Ivisic for an and-1 to make it 16. A Johnson scoop and dime to Murray-Boyles grew it again.
16, 18, 20, it so gradually developed into a rout you almost lost track of it. One look at the court.
One minute the tunnels were empty, the next minute security guards were gathered in case of a court storming, which happened anyway.
It was that kind of night in Columbia, the first one in a long time.
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