One time is an aberration. Twice is a coincidence. Three or more is a trend.

Once again, South Carolina men’s basketball started slow in a buy game. Sloppy turnovers, shaky defense, underwhelming shooting. The Gamecocks found themselves trailing Radford in the second half, just as they did against North Florida, Mercer and East Carolina.

On all occasions except North Florida, the talent gap showed up in time and the Gamecocks avoided stepping on the landmine. This time it was a 74-48 victory, as an 11-2 run early in the second half powered South Carolina past the Highlanders for a sixth consecutive victory.

"I just thought we were a little disjointed in our focus," Lamont Paris said. "We were not in full and clear focus in the first half. In the second half we got it back together, particularly on the defensive end. Not that I anticipated that it would look like that both halves, but I did think we had the potential to do a really good job against them defensively."

Right from the start, it looked like a day coated in doubt. South Carolina (9-3) turned it over four times on its first seven possessions, giving a deep Radford (10-5) team which played 11 players in the first half some runway to build an advantage. Radford scored 20 points in the paint in the opening half and became the latest undersized team to keep up in the offensive rebuilding battle against the Gamecocks.

The funk was prolonged, the energy was predictably low with a light pre-Christmas crowd and an emotional come down from the emotional high of the Clemson win, and a sleepwalking team entered the locker room trailing by six.

Jamarii Thomas finally woke his team up. The starting point guard has a stretch with back-to-back made 3-pointers and a forced turnover to kickstart a game flipping run, an eventual 29-8 spurt which shot South Carolina in front to what ended up being a comfortable win on the scoreboard. Thomas ended the game with 18 points, his fourth consecutive game in double-figures.

Cam Scott knocked down two 3-pointers on the day, Jacobi Wright and Morris Ugusuk each knocked down key shots in the run and as always, Collin Murray-Boyles supplied the bulk of the offense. Murray-Boyles scored 15 points, and his starting post mate Nick Pringle had a dozen.

"Cam's a really good player," Thomas said. "He has a really good feel for the game."

All but two of which from the free throw line. For a forward who started his season 13-of-24 at the line but is now 31-of-37 since, this is a crucial development with conference play around the corner.

"The game before we played Indiana, me and coach had a little sit down," Pringle said. "We watched my form, recorded it, and we got in the gym literally one day and he showed me the right way to do it. Since then it's been a drastic change and improvement."

Free throws bailed South Carolina out of this particular quad three jam more than anything else. The Gamecocks were 25-of-27 at the line and hit 16 in a row from the charity stripe at one stage, finally asserting their size advantage to generate points at the free throw line and put the Highlanders away.

The defense turned it up another notch, too, holding Radford off the scoreboard for over six minutes to end the game. The Highlanders scored just 12 points in the second half, a season low for any half allowed by the Gamecocks to go along with a game-low of 48 a full 18 points below the next-best defensive output.

"Just changing the intensity," Thomas said was the second half difference defensively. "We came out sloppy; we looked like we were ready to go home. But we just changed the defensive intensity and pressured the ball more."

Just one more game to go before SEC play, as South Carolina will wrap up its non-conference schedule with a home tilt against Presbyterian on Dec. 30.

But through a dozen games, there is enough of a sample size to say this team struggles to start games. Now the question is, can it survive that weakness when the SEC schedule hits?

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