One way or another, the conversation around South Carolina men’s basketball’s season will shift tomorrow night. A win over No. 25 Clemson would go far beyond just getting one over on an in-state rival. It would be the first ranked win of the season, a critical bullet point for any possible March resume talk and be the first real proof of concept of a tangible step forward after an opening night loss to North Florida threw the entire season behind the eight ball.
The Gamecocks have handled business in buy games since the Nov. 4 disaster, sure. The likes of South Carolina State, Mercer, East Carolina and USC Upstate have been brushed aside, among others. But a 16-point loss to Indiana and a blown lead against Xavier in Fort Myers have kept the question of how good this team really is lingering, and probably the most grueling SEC slate of all-time starts in less than three weeks.
Lose to Clemson for a fourth non-conference loss before the 18-game conference gauntlet even starts, and the ceiling already starts to look much lower for this group.
“I think you have to be really intentional about being ready to go out there and lace ‘em up and be ready to scrap and claw and fight,” head coach Lamont Paris said. “Because they’re going to do the same thing.”
In a lot of ways, these Tigers are built like a lot of the teams South Carolina will face in league play. They’re lengthy in the frontcourt, active on the perimeter and tough defensively. Based on KenPom’s advanced analytics, Clemson is currently 16th nationally in defensive rating, ahead of all but three SEC teams. Forward Ian Schieffelin is third nationally in rebounding with at least 13 boards in five of his last six games. And as a team, these Tigers are 9-2 for a reason.
They already have a win over Kentucky — one of only two ACC teams to beat an SEC foe in the 16-game conference challenge — and one of its two losses was an overtime squeaker against Memphis.
Even if the Tigers would be roughly around the middle of the SEC pack, these are exactly the types of games South Carolina’s season will hinge on. Clemson is currently ranked below seven and above nine teams in the league in both KenPom and the AP Poll.
To say nothing of squads like Auburn or Tennessee currently atop the national rankings, can a flat showing tomorrow really inspire any confidence that South Carolina is ready for even a Mississippi State or Arkansas type opponent? And on the flip side, what could a win like this do for everyone in the building both for confidence, and a blueprint moving forward?
“There’s a lot of reasons to be excited,” Paris said. “They’re not good because someone ranked them and they put a little number next to them. To the eyeball, they’re good. They have good players, they do good things, they do winning things. It’s a great opportunity for us.”
Regardless of outcome, it feels like a clarifying moment after a questionable first six weeks of the season. When the final buzzer sounds, South Carolina will only have games against Radford and Presbyterian to go before SEC play starts Jan. 4 at Mississippi State.
And on top of everything else, with the ramifications of playing the toughest non-conference opponent on the schedule and the timing of the tilt, this is still Clemson. It is still a rivalry game, the one opponent on every season schedule where both teams have that little extra energetic step without any surroundingcircumstances. And so far in the Paris era, it is a match-up with two games decided by a total of seven points.
“It means a lot being a kid from South Carolina playing for South Carolina,” senior guard Jacobi Wright said. “It’s our biggest in-state rival, so every time we see each other each year it means everything.”
Under the microscope they go, with the clearest look at this Gamecock team yet waiting.
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