Unfortunately for South Carolina men’s basketball, USC Upstate and everyone at Colonial Life Arena, most of the game took a backseat.
The Gamecocks beat the Spartans 73-53 in their first game coming out of the exam break, but a far more pressing matter hovered over proceedings for most of the day.
With 5:09 remaining in the first half, USC Upstate junior Brit Harris dunked in transition, but lost grip on the rim and somersaulted as he was coming back down. Harris landed hard on the floor and ended up going off on a stretcher, moving his arms a little bit as he left the floor to a standing ovation.
"I think the one thing that was helpful in the scenario was I think we could all see that he was moving body parts on his own accord," Lamont Paris said. "I think just mentally being able to move forward, there's some level in your mind of confidence in the outcome that allows you to a little more easily move on to playing the game.
"Hopefully it's something minor, just a scare hopefully. Maybe he'll be sore tomorrow or in the next couple days, but hopefully it's something relatively minor."
According to South Carolina's communications staff, Harris was stabalized and coherent when he left Colonial Life Arena before being taken to a nearby hospital for additional testing.
Everything from that point on felt like a game slowly lurching towards its finish line with neither team really fully in it mentally, an understandable emotion as everyone involved had to compartmentalize the situation and move on with the still 25 minutes of game action left.
As for the action in South Carolina’s (7-3) first action off exam break and final chance to fine tune things before Clemson comes to town on Tuesday, the Gamecocks found whatever they wanted inside against a severely undersized USC Upstate (4-9) frontcourt. Nick Pringle and Collin Murray-Boyles went to work early and often, combining for five made field goals in the first seven minutes. It was easy bully ball all day for the two starting bigs, and both had milestones by the end of it.
"I told Nick in the recruiting process that I wanted to explore what scoring points looked like for him," Paris said. "And putting him in some situations where he was going to have to create something for himself and make some decisions. "We're going to continue to do that."
Murray-Boyles had his third straight double-double and fourth of the season with 13 points and 11 rebounds, and Pringle tied his career-high in scoring with 19 points, a number he reached twice in an Alabama uniform. Guard Jacobi Wright also tied his career-high with six assists, facilitating the post players for most of the afternoon.
USC Upstate did make one brief charge going into the locker room, taking a 7-0 run into the break to slice a 14-point deficit in half. But South Carolina immediately went back to its bread and butter, finding Pringle and Murray-Boyles for the first two buckets of the second half to take the lead back to double-digits. An 8-0 run midway through the half put the game completely out of reach and made the final minutes garbage time as South Carolina put the finishing touches on a fourth consecutive win.
"Coach always made the blueprint out to be something like that," Pringle said. "One thing we talked about before the game was trying to get the lobs going and see what that looks like. I feel like our guards did a great job of putting it in the right spots."
The Gamecocks finished the day with just seven turnovers, the season-low mark and only the second time limiting the number to single-digits along with only having nine against Towson.
Exam break over, rust knocked off, a little bit of positive momentum.
"The confidence is there," Wright said. "We're on a good streak right now, so we just want to keep going and keep the streak alive."
And now here comes rivalry night, and a ranked Clemson team on Tuesday.
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