South Carolina Trounced By George Washington
After going winless in the Charleston Classic two weekends ago, head coach Lamont Paris and his team had a nice bounce-back game the day after Thanksgiving against the USC-Upstate Spartans.
Heading into Wednesday's game, however, there was one thing that South Carolina still needed to do in their non-conference slate, which was play a true road game.
Their first one against George Washington was about as bad as it could've been. What all went wrong?
A Disastrous Start
In the first half, the South Carolina Gamecocks could not find any consistency on either side of the court.
Offensively, South Carolina's off-ball players were constantly moving to avoid making it easier for the Colonial defenders. The Gamecocks, however, ran into issues with spacing on multiple possessions. On different occasions, players found themselves bunched together in a tight area, thus negating their advantage of collective team movement.
At the same time, when South Carolina got an open look, they could not connect on almost any shots, as the team was 24.2% from the field in the first twenty minutes.
On the defensive side of the floor, Paris' squad had lapses both early and later on in the first half when trying to defend the pick and roll, and at other times, defenders lost track of their matchup, which allowed for easy backdoor cuts to the basket.
James Bishop IV, in particular, had his way with the Gamecocks in the first half, scoring 15 points off of a 50% shooting clip.
Struggles Continued Late
In the second half, things didn't get much better for South Carolina, as besides GG Jackson, no one was able to create open shots for themselves, something that most of this team seems to need more.
South Carolina also didn't create many second chance opportunities either, as there were few instances where the Colonials were blocked out from the paint, allowing them to get into transition sets much quicker.
While the Gamecocks were more active at the beginning of the second 20-minute period, the Colonials continued to hurt them offensively, hitting multiple threes due to a lack of urgency in rotations that subsequently led to too much space for George Washington shooters.
Paris and his staff will now face the challenge of reeling this team back emotionally on the heels of this blowout loss, as they'll take on the Georgetown Hoyas on Saturday.
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