South Carolina Men's Basketball Holds On For 68-65 Win Over Ole Miss
Another win the Gamecocks can take six ways to Selection Sunday.
As in, six in a row.
No. 15 South Carolina men’s basketball survived a furious Ole Miss rally to nab a 68-65 win front of a sold out Colonial Life Arena, a sixth consecutive win for the newly-ranked Gamecocks.
Ole Miss (18-5, 5-5 SEC) tripped a 17-point deficit all the way down within one possession in the final 30 seconds and even had a shot in the air to tie it, but a 3-pointer missed short and the Gamecocks collected to rebound to thwart the comeback bid.
"We were going to be in a mode where we were going to switch everything aggressively in a fashion where you don't give a 3," Lamont Paris said on the last possession. "If you foul when that is happening, so be it. We hadn't called specifically to foul, but we wanted to be very aggressive in what we were doing."
Jacobi Wright got a piece of Matthew Murrell's last-gasp attempt, and it was the final action of another frantic night in Columbia.
It means this is officially South Carolina’s (20-3, 8-2 SEC) second-longest SEC winning streak in program history, only trailing the 11 straight games won in the conference title season of 1996-97. It also secured the first 20-win season for the program since 2016-17, still with eight regular season games plus the postseason to go, and made Lamont Paris the winningest second-year coach in program history.
South Carolina’s defense-first team took a half to erupt shooting, unloading a barrage of 3-pointers on Ole Miss. Meechie Johnson got one to go down less than two minutes in, and Zachary Davis followed shortly with one from the top of the key in off the window. It was a bank shot which was the first deposit of a lengthy South Carolina run.
The Gamecocks went on a 14-2 spurt to assume control, keyed by three Myles Stute 3-pointers in his first home game back after his shoulder injury. It was part of a stretch where the Gamecocks hit 12 of their first 16 shots from the floor and took a 62.4 percent shooting clip into halftime. This time Johnson was the straw stirring the offensive drink, dishing out six assists in the first half and a season-high eight in the game.
"He is a professional," Paris said about Stute. " He works like a professional, he’s an older guy, he understands it, he gets it."
A mostly comfortable evening with more free-flowing basketball saw the lead rise as high as 17 into the second half, only for the drought to follow. A long, excruciating shooting slump which Ole Miss capitalized on.
Everything positive from the first half swung back in the other direction, the typical basketball pendulum to the nth degree. A stretch of 17 misses on 24 field goal attempts helped Ole Miss get all the way back into it, led by the efficient scoring duo of Allen Flanigan and Murrell with 26 and 17 points respectively.
Ole MIss trimmed its deficit all the way down to two in front of an increasingly sheepish whiteout crowd in Columbia. But needing an answer, South Carolina’s leaders stemmed the tide.
Johnson found Stute on a crisp baseline pass, his career-high tying eighth assist of the night and Stute’s fourth 3-pointer of his 12-point performance. After Ole Miss guard Austin Nunez missed a wide open 3 with a chance to tie it, Collin Murray-Boyles added more to his second consecutive sensational scoring performance with a strong layup. The local freshman scored 16 points and grabbed nine rebounds, his second consecutive game with 16 points.
South Carolina will be back in action for the other end of its two-game homestand against lowly Vanderbilt Saturday at 1 p.m., coming into Columbia with just one SEC win on the season.
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